Looking for Tuesday’s Wordle hints, clues and answer? You can find them here:
It’s snowing again! It keeps snowing in these fast flurries that come and go all at once. Brief blizzards. At the gym yesterday, I looked out the windows and it was almost a white-out. Ten minutes later, it was a bright sunny afternoon.
Today is colder and greyer. Stubborn winter, refusing to budge. It’s also Wordle Wednesday! Each Wednesday I give out a special riddle, brain teaser or logic puzzle as an added challenge. Here’s today’s:
Riddle: What goes up a chimney down, but not down a chimney up?
I’ll post the answer here on this blog in tomorrow’s Wordle guide, so stay tuned and let me know if you solve it by hitting me up on Twitter and Facebook.
Alright, Wordle time!
How To Solve Today’s Wordle
The Hint: Yellowjackets.
The Clue: Today’s Wordle is past tense.
Okay, spoilers below!
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The Answer:
Wordle Analysis
Every day I check Wordle Bot to see how I did. You can check your Wordles with Wordle Bot right here.
You can probably guess why I picked my opening word—snowy—by now. But it has been quite snowy this year. We’ll be over 90 inches soon, probably by today and at least by this weekend. This was a good guess, leaving me with a green and a yellow box and just 47 words remaining.
I almost went with shine at this point. For one thing, I had a sneaking suspicion that the ‘N’ would be in the second-to-last box, and since I already knew where the ‘S’ was I came up with a word that moved the ‘N’ and tried out a couple other vowels. Besides, it was funny to me to go from snowy to shine. Instead, I went with gaunt, simply because I already knew where the ‘S’ went and I doubted very much that shine would be the answer.
This was a good instinct. Gaunt left me with two greens and two yellows and only one remaining solution: stung.
Competitive Wordle Score
I get 1 point for guessing in three, but the Bot did as well so that’s 0 for tying. 1 point is good enough for me!
Today’s Wordle Etymology
The word ‘stung’ is the past participle of ‘sting,’ which comes from the Old English word ‘stingan,’ meaning to prick, puncture, or stab. The etymology can be traced further back to Proto-Germanic *stinganą, which also meant to prick or pierce. This Proto-Germanic term is believed to have Indo-European roots, with connections to the Proto-Indo-European *steyg- or *steg-, meaning to prick, stick, or pierce.
The evolution of the word from ‘stingan’ in Old English to ‘sting’ in Modern English, with ‘stung’ as its past tense, reflects a common pattern in the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, where verbs undergo a vowel change to indicate past tense—a phenomenon known as ablaut. The word has kept its meaning relatively stable over the centuries, referring to the action of being pricked or pierced, often by an insect’s sharp part, like a bee or wasp, that injects venom.
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