Wordle
Wordle

Wordle players tackling Sunday's puzzle can find help here, with hints and the full solution for game number 1,870, the daily word puzzle from The New York Times.

The word puzzle, which challenges players to guess a five-letter word within six attempts, has remained one of the most consistently popular daily games since its rise to viral popularity in 2022. The game was originally created by software engineer Josh Wardle before The New York Times acquired it, and it has since spawned a broader family of daily puzzles under the Times' games umbrella.

For players looking for hints before jumping straight to the answer, several clues can help narrow down the possibilities without giving the solution away entirely. Today's word functions as an adjective and relates to matters of punishment, penalties or punitive institutions, the kind of terminology commonly encountered in legal or criminal justice contexts.

Structurally, today's word contains two vowels and three consonants among its five letters, with no repeated letters anywhere in the word, meaning each of the five letters used appears only once. The word begins with the letter "P."

Today's Wordle answer is PENAL.

Penal describes anything relating to punishment, penalties or the legal systems and institutions built around punishing wrongdoing, as in phrases like "penal code" or "penal colony." The word derives from the same Latin root, poena, meaning penalty or punishment, that also gives English words such as "penalty" and "pain."

Puzzle strategy writers who cover Wordle daily offered guidance on effective opening words for tackling puzzles like Sunday's. According to the New York Times' WordleBot, which tracks how the average solver performs each day, CRANE has consistently ranked as one of the strongest overall starting words across the full archive of past puzzles, since it efficiently tests several of the most commonly occurring letters in five-letter English words without duplicating any of them. Other frequently recommended opening words include ADIEU, STARE and ROAST, each offering a different balance of vowel and consonant coverage depending on a player's preferred strategy.

Strategy guides covering Sunday's specific puzzle noted that words weighted heavily toward vowels, such as ADIEU and AUDIO, tend to rank lower in overall opening-word effectiveness despite their intuitive appeal, since they secure vowel placement at the cost of testing the consonants that more often distinguish one candidate word from another once a player has narrowed the field. For puzzles like Sunday's, where the final word contains a relatively balanced two-vowel, three-consonant structure, opening guesses that spread coverage across both vowels and high-frequency consonants tend to produce more useful feedback in early guesses.

Wordle strategy guides commonly recommend a systematic approach for players working through the daily puzzle: begin with an opening word that tests several common vowels and consonants simultaneously, then use the resulting feedback, letters marked in green for correct placement, yellow for correct letters in the wrong position, and gray for letters not present in the word at all, to progressively eliminate incorrect possibilities across subsequent guesses. Strategy writers also caution players against ruling out repeated letters too early in a solve, noting that some past Wordle answers, including words like SHEEP and BLOOM, have featured a letter appearing twice, even though today's specific answer did not follow that pattern. When narrowing down to a final one or two guesses, players are generally advised to avoid speculative or unlikely word choices in favor of guesses that satisfy all previously confirmed letter placements and exclusions.

Wordle has remained one of the most popular daily word games worldwide since its rise to prominence, spawning a broader ecosystem of related puzzles now published by The New York Times, including Connections, Connections: Sports Edition, Strands and the Mini Crossword, all of which are typically released and refreshed at the same time each day alongside the main Wordle puzzle. Sunday's edition of Connections carried puzzle number 1,148, while Strands carried puzzle number 882, giving players a full slate of word-based challenges to work through alongside Wordle.

Players looking to maintain their daily Wordle streak, a feature the game uses to track consecutive days of play, can find Sunday's puzzle and previous archived puzzles through the official Wordle website. The New York Times also continues to publish daily hints and strategy guidance across its games section for players seeking assistance without immediately revealing the day's answer outright, a resource that has become a regular part of many players' daily puzzle-solving routine, particularly on days when a puzzle's subject matter, such as Sunday's legal and punitive theme, falls outside a player's everyday vocabulary.

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