Today's Wordle Hints and Answer: Help for April 16, #1032

Today's Wordle answer is a word you likely know but perhaps don't use often. Some of its letters are pretty common, while others are rarer and might be tough to guess.

Every day, we'll post hints and then the answer for the current day's Wordle, just in case you need it.

Warning: If you keep reading, you'll see the Wordle answer for Tuesday April 16, puzzle #1032. That could be a devastating spoiler for some players. But if you just need the answer -- maybe you're on your last guess and just don't want to see an 800-game streak go poof -- keep reading.

There's only one vowel in today's answer.

The lone vowel sits right in the middle of today's answer.

There are no repeated letters in today's answer.

The answer begins with the letter S.

If you play golf, you might use this word. It's also used frequently by butchers and in prison movies.

Here comes the spoiler: Today's Wordle answer is SHANK. It's a term golfers use when they hit the ball with the extreme heel of the club (football players can shank a kick, too). It's also used in prison movies to mean a homemade knife, or as a verb meaning to stab someone with that knife. Butchers use it for a certain cut of meat.

I've written a lot about Wordle -- from covering its 1,000th word to my list of the best starter words to a helpful two-step strategy to controversial word changes. I've even rounded up what I learned playing the hit online word puzzle for a full year. So if you're rethinking your need for the actual answer, you might try tips from one of those stories.

Still need a starter word? One person told me they just look around and choose a five-letter object that they've spotted to use as their starter word -- such as COUCH or CHAIR. I tend to stick to starter words that have the most popular letters used in English words. I like TRAIN as a starter, though I have a friend who uses TRAIL. I've read that people use the financial term ROATE, but I like to use words I actually know.

If you read this far, you know how to play. You have six chances to guess a five-letter word, and the game gives you feedback as to whether the letters you've guessed are in the puzzle, and if they are in the same spot where you guessed them to be. The Times bought the game from creator Josh Wardle for seven figures in 2022. Wardle famously created the game for his partner, and let them narrow down the 12,000 five-letter words in the English language to just 2,500, creating the database of answers. It was convenient of him to have a name that plays off "word" too.

A Times spokesperson told me it lists the very first Wordle as appearing on June 19, 2021, and the paper celebrated the game's 1,000th word on March 15. Spoiler: That 1,000th word was ERUPT. As in, Dad will ERUPT if the Wordle is so tough he loses his streak.

There are other fun games in the Times Games stable. My latest addiction is Connections, which I think is trickier than Wordle. This is the game where you look at a grid of 16 words and try to put them into four groups of related words. Sometimes the relationships between the words are pretty out there -- like the time when it was four words that all began with rock bands, such as RUSHMORE and JOURNEYMAN. (Connections got a little sassy on April Fool's Day with an all-emoji puzzle. Some gamers did NOT find that funny.)

Spelling Bee is a popular Times game too. And there's a new game that's still in beta, Strands, which I'm trying to master.