Wordle #698 hints & answer for May 18, 2023
· Thursday
This page always keeps Wordle #698 for May 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.
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Hints for Wordle #698
What kind of word
Wiktionary lists it as a verb, and also as an adjective.
What it means
“Of a person, having had a haircut.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.
How it starts
Begins with S.
The middle letter
The middle letter is O.
How it ends
Ends in N.
Reveal the answer and explanation
The answer to Wordle #698 was
SHORN: past participle of shear
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 in general English, only one vowel.
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: 64/100 (middle of the pack). 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 #698, measured
This section compares SHORN'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, SHORN measured harder for the solver than about 64% of all 1,952 recorded answers to date. Its rating is middle of the pack. The example solver route takes four turns; CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU leave about 79 possible answers.
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 10 of the 2,384 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, AUDIO left 286 candidates, about 29 times as many. ADIEU came back all gray. None of its letters appear in SHORN. The vowel-heavy probes ADIEU and AUDIO revealed comparatively little here. Vowel coverage helps only when the answer's vowels are still in doubt.
| Opener | First-guess feedback | Answers still possible |
|---|---|---|
| STARE | STARE | 10 |
| CRANE | CRANE | 13 |
| TARSE | TARSE | 14 |
| RAISE | RAISE | 25 |
| ARISE | ARISE | 26 |
| SALET | SALET | 58 |
| SLATE | SLATE | 58 |
| TRACE | TRACE | 67 |
| ADIEU | ADIEU | 166 |
| AUDIO | AUDIO | 286 |
“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 SHORN → It shows which guesses reduced the candidate pool on each turn.
Solver replay
One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to SHORN.
The solver reaches the answer in 4 guesses.
Common questions
- What was the Wordle answer for May 18, 2023?
- The Wordle answer for May 18, 2023 (puzzle #698) was SHORN.
- What does SHORN mean?
- SHORN: past participle of shear
- Why was Wordle #698 tricky?
- SHORN is rated tricky for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: uncommon in general English, only one vowel.