Wordle #668 hints & answer for April 18, 2023
· Tuesday
This page always keeps Wordle #668 for April 18, 2023. Check that number against your game before opening a hint. The answer remains below a separate reveal.
Wordle changes at midnight in your local time zone. For the current local puzzle, use today’s hints. This dated page keeps the same puzzle when the day changes.
Our independent hints use the verified puzzle answer. Play the official game at The New York Times.
Hints for Wordle #668
What kind of word
Wiktionary lists it as a noun.
What it means
“A dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.
Fill the gap
“He _____ me for weeks, but I was simply unable to pay back his loan.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentence selected from Wiktionary, with the answer removed.
How it ends
Ends in D.
How it starts
Begins with H.
Reveal the answer and explanation
The answer to Wordle #668 was
HOUND: A dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting 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 easier: five different letters, at least two vowels and none of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.
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: 99/100 (hard for the solver). 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 #668, measured
This section compares HOUND'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, HOUND measured harder for the solver than about 99% of all 1,952 recorded answers to date. Its rating is hard for the solver. The example solver route takes 5 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
AUDIO left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 16 of the 2,384 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, TRACE left 256 candidates, about 16 times as many. ARISE, RAISE, SALET, SLATE, STARE, TARSE and TRACE came back all gray. None of their letters appear in HOUND.
| Opener | First-guess feedback | Answers still possible |
|---|---|---|
| AUDIO | AUDIO | 16 |
| ADIEU | ADIEU | 30 |
| CRANE | CRANE | 58 |
| ARISE | ARISE | 175 |
| RAISE | RAISE | 175 |
| SALET | SALET | 230 |
| SLATE | SLATE | 230 |
| STARE | STARE | 236 |
| TARSE | TARSE | 236 |
| TRACE | TRACE | 256 |
“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 HOUND → It shows which guesses reduced the candidate pool on each turn.
Solver replay
One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to HOUND.
The solver reaches the answer in 5 guesses.
Common questions
- What was the Wordle answer for April 18, 2023?
- The Wordle answer for April 18, 2023 (puzzle #668) was HOUND.
- What does HOUND mean?
- HOUND: A dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.
- Why was Wordle #668 tricky?
- HOUND is rated easy for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be easier: five different letters, at least two vowels and none of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.