Wordle
Wordle

Wordle players looking for help with Monday's puzzle can find the full breakdown of hints, clues and the confirmed solution below. Today's puzzle, numbered 1,864 by The New York Times, centered on a word that carries a double meaning, tripping up some solvers who leaned too heavily on the wrong definition early on.

Today's Wordle answer

The solution to Wordle #1,864 for Monday, July 27, 2026, is POSER.

The word can refer either to a difficult or puzzling problem, or to a person who fakes or exaggerates something in order to keep up appearances. It contains no repeated letters and includes two vowels and three consonants. According to the New York Times' WordleBot tracking tool, the average player solved today's puzzle in 3.7 guesses under standard "easy" mode rules, or 3.6 guesses under the stricter "hard mode," which requires players to reuse any letters they've already confirmed are correct in subsequent guesses. That average places today's puzzle among the slightly easier entries in recent weeks.

Hints for players still working through it

For readers who haven't solved today's puzzle yet and want a nudge without spoiling the answer outright, several outlets circulated a consistent set of clues throughout the day. The word is a noun that can describe either a difficult, thorny problem or a person putting on a false front. It contains two of the five vowels and three consonants, with no letters repeated anywhere in the five-letter sequence. Today's word also begins with the letter P, a detail that, combined with the other clues, was generally enough for most solvers to narrow the field considerably before making a final guess.

How the puzzle played out

Solvers who opened with common strong starting words found today's puzzle manageable once the "P" placement became clear. One puzzle tracker described opening with ORATE, a word chosen because it contains five of the most frequently used letters in English, which turned both the "O" and "A" yellow on the first guess, narrowing the field to 73 possible remaining answers according to WordleBot's tracking data. From there, a follow-up guess of SOBER turned the "R" green, confirming the answer had to fit the pattern "?OSER," which left only one valid remaining word: POSER. That path led to a four-guess win for at least one puzzle tracker who documented the process.

Why today's word tripped up some players

Words with double meanings, like POSER, occasionally cause more hesitation among solvers than straightforward, single-definition words, since some players spend extra guesses testing words related to one meaning of the clue before realizing the other definition applies. In this case, the "difficult problem" framing and the "person faking appearances" framing both pointed toward the same five-letter word, which likely helped rather than hurt overall solve times once players recognized both possible readings pointed to the same answer.

Yesterday's puzzle, for those catching up

Players working through Monday's puzzle a day behind, or checking in from an earlier time zone, may still be curious about Sunday's answer. Wordle #1,863, published July 26, 2026, was GRAPE, a word describing the smooth-skinned fruit commonly used in winemaking. That puzzle proved somewhat trickier for some solvers, with one puzzle tracker noting they had three green letters after their very first guess but still needed four additional turns to land on the correct word, describing the experience as a "frustrating puzzle." Sunday's puzzle carried a slightly higher average solve time of 3.9 guesses in easy mode and 3.8 in hard mode, according to WordleBot.

How Wordle works, for newer players

Wordle, created by software engineer Josh Wardle in 2021 before its acquisition by The New York Times, remains one of the most widely played daily word games in the world. Players get six attempts to guess a hidden five-letter word, receiving color-coded feedback after each guess: green indicates a correct letter in the correct position, yellow indicates a correct letter in the wrong position, and gray indicates the letter does not appear in the word at all. The puzzle resets once daily at midnight in each player's local time zone, ensuring everyone worldwide is working from the same word within a given day, a design choice widely credited with fueling the game's viral spread through shareable, spoiler-free results grids.

Strategy guides commonly recommend opening with a word containing a strong mix of common vowels and consonants — words like CRANE, SLATE, ADIEU or ORATE are frequently cited as strong starting choices — to maximize the information gained from the very first guess.

Other NYT puzzles today

Wordle remains just one piece of the Times' growing suite of daily games, which has become an important driver of the paper's digital subscription business. Monday's lineup also included Connections, a category-sorting word puzzle; Connections: Sports Edition; Strands, a themed word-search style puzzle, with Monday's edition numbered puzzle 876; and the Mini Crossword, a condensed daily crossword designed for quick play sessions.

With Monday's puzzle solved, players building daily Wordle streaks typically shift their attention toward tracking recently used words to sharpen their guessing strategy heading into future puzzles, since the Times avoids repeating recent answers. Puzzle trackers maintain running lists of prior Wordle solutions specifically to help players rule out recently used words when they're stuck narrowing down a guess on a particularly difficult day.

For now, Wordle #1,864 closes out with POSER as the confirmed answer, a solve time slightly faster than the previous day's puzzle, and another reminder of how a simple, shared word game continues to draw a dedicated daily following nearly five years after its original release.

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