Welcome to The Wordle Review. Be warned: This article contains spoilers for today’s puzzle. Solve Wordle first, or scroll at your own risk.

This month’s featured artist is Colin Laurel. You can read more about him here.

★★

Wordle 697 3/6*

⬜⬜🟩⬜⬜ IRATE
⬜🟨🟩🟩🟩 SPANK
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 PLANK

My little brother imposed his Wordle strategy on me for today. He starts every day with IRATE and follows it with GLOWS. I take issue with that because plurals and verb forms that add “S” or “ES” and “D” or “ED” to four- or three-letter words are not in the Wordle answer list, and also because he is my little brother, so I’m liable to take issue with a lot of things he says.

Besides the S, another weak link in GLOWS is the W with its high Scrabble rating, indicating a lack of usability. He would be better off using a fun word with variety in its letter pattern — like JUMBO, COMFY or GUNKY — if IRATE doesn’t cut it. Or he can start with ARISE and follow up with something like POUTY. There seem to be endless combinations of five-letter words that, taken together, knock out 10 unique letters as guesses. Do you have a two-word combination you like to use if you’re faced with gray squares at your first guess? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Playing Wordle with my brother did have its benefits, though. Sometimes, two heads are better than one when it comes to solving. Even though we only had the center A to work with, we came up with SPANK. It was a great guess, and an almost-winner, one that allowed us to cinch the game in three.

Today’s Wordle gets two stars: It’s a thoroughly middling vocabulary word. There’s nothing special about it.

Today’s word is PLANK, a noun. According to Webster’s New World College Dictionary, it refers to a long, broad board, a piece of lumber, or anything “that supports or sustains” a structure.

Today’s Statistics

Today’s puzzle is moderately easy.

The letter pattern in today’s word is distinct enough that the answer can be found within six guesses, and the word is familiar, with no repeating letters.

Our Featured Artist

Colin Laurel is a Black illustrator with an affinity for bold line work and joyous expression. He uses his identity as a lens through which to provide healing imagery to queer and marginalized communities, and he has referred to his art as a form of self-care. Mr. Laurel is influenced by vintage movie posters, production art, video games, music and mythology. With each piece, he hopes to convey humanity’s relationship with the beauty of nature.

Further Reading

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