‘Down to the wire’: Players struggle to guess Wordle 288 answer

WARNING: Spoilers ahead

(AFP via Getty Images)

Another day, another head-scratching Wordle. While the word game has been kinder to its players in recent weeks, many struggled to guess the answer today for Wordle 288.

The way Wordle works is that players have just six attempts to guess the five-letter word of the day. The word is the same for every user worldwide.

The word game was created by US-based software engineer Josh Wardle last year and released to the public in October. After going viral in January, it was acquired by The New York Times for an undisclosed seven-figure sum and migrated to the publication’s platform in February.

Since the popularity of Wordle skyrocketed, there have been many dupes of the game, including Quordle, where you can play four Wordles at once; Octordle, where you can play eight games at once; Worldle, a geography guessing game where you guess a country based on its shape; and Heardle, where you guess the song of the day based on the first few bars of the tune.

Despite the myriad of variations, social media users continue to post their Wordle scores on Twitter in the form of green and yellow squares.

(Warning: Spoilers ahead)

However, today’s game has stumped a few Twitter users, with one commenting that it was “down to the wire” for whether or not they were going to guess the word.

That is because the Wordle 288 answer is “fewer”, which contains a tricky double letter.

“Ngl [not going to lie] this one was starting to make me nervous…” one user wrote, sharing that they guessed the word on their sixth and final attempt.

One user, who didn’t guess the word, lamented that their streak was over, while another added that it “nearly” broke their streak.

Another, who guessed the correct word on the sixth try, said: “Pulled that one out of my nether regions.”

One user, whose 86-game streak ended with this word, said they were going to give up playing the game.

Another user, who managed to guess the word in five attempts, said: “My heart skipped a beat thinking I might lose my streak! 55 and counting!”

For one player, guessing the word correctly marked their 100th game played and their 100th win.

Want to brush up on your Wordle game before it resets for tomorrow? These tips from a linguistics expert should do the trick.