Wordle #59 hints & answer for August 17, 2021
· Tuesday
This page always keeps Wordle #59 for August 17, 2021. Check that number against your game before opening a hint. The answer remains below a separate reveal.
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Hints for Wordle #59
What kind of word
Wiktionary lists it as a noun, and also as an adjective.
What it means
“The hard white form of dentin which forms the tusks of elephants, walruses and other animals.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.
The middle letter
The middle letter is O.
Where the vowels sit
The vowels are the first and third letters.
How it starts
Begins with I.
Reveal the answer and explanation
The answer to Wordle #59 was
IVORY: The hard white form of dentin which forms the tusks of elephants, walruses and other animals.
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.
Why it may be difficult: uncommon letters.
The word rating describes familiarity and letter features. The solver score below measures how a fixed strategy handles the puzzle; an unusual word can still be easy for that strategy.
How difficult was it for the solver?
Solver pressure: 85/100 (tricky). This is a percentile among past puzzles under the same strategy: 0 is easiest and 100 is hardest for the solver.
This compares past puzzles under the same solver settings; it does not measure how players performed. Compare more puzzles →
Wordle #59, measured
This section compares IVORY's solver-difficulty percentile, first-guess results for ten familiar openers, and opt-in player reports. Each number identifies its dataset.
Solver difficulty, as a percentile
This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, IVORY measured harder for the solver than about 85% of all 1,952 recorded answers to date. Its rating is tricky. The example solver route takes four turns; CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU leave a large group.
Solver pressure ranks the answer within the pool; it does not measure player performance. The opener table compares first-guess results, and the contributed ratings report player results.
CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU benchmark
STARE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 20 of the 2,384 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, SLATE left 230 candidates, about 12 times as many. SALET and SLATE came back all gray. None of their letters appear in IVORY.
| Opener | First-guess feedback | Answers still possible |
|---|---|---|
| STARE | STARE | 20 |
| ARISE | ARISE | 21 |
| RAISE | RAISE | 23 |
| AUDIO | AUDIO | 33 |
| TRACE | TRACE | 67 |
| CRANE | CRANE | 93 |
| TARSE | TARSE | 95 |
| ADIEU | ADIEU | 120 |
| SALET | SALET | 230 |
| SLATE | SLATE | 230 |
“Answers still possible” counts the words in the site's 2,384-word working answer pool whose feedback would match that opener exactly. This is pattern arithmetic, not a simulation. A smaller number means the opener left fewer possible answers after the first guess. It does not describe later turns.
Contributed player ratings
Not enough contributed games to publish player figures for this puzzle. Per-puzzle numbers appear only after at least 10 opt-in games arrive. See how the Observatory collects and publishes player data →
See the solver's route to IVORY → It shows which guesses reduced the candidate pool on each turn.
Solver replay
One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to IVORY.
The solver reaches the answer in 4 guesses.
Common questions
- What was the Wordle answer for August 17, 2021?
- The Wordle answer for August 17, 2021 (puzzle #59) was IVORY.
- What does IVORY mean?
- IVORY: The hard white form of dentin which forms the tusks of elephants, walruses and other animals.
- Why was Wordle #59 tricky?
- IVORY is rated moderate for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: uncommon letters.