Wordle #946 hints & answer for January 21, 2024
· Sunday
This page always keeps Wordle #946 for January 21, 2024. 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 #946
What kind of word
Wiktionary lists it as a noun, and also as an adjective.
What it means
“The up or positive direction.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.
Fill the gap
“Stock prices are heading back towards the _____.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentence selected from Wiktionary, with the answer removed.
How it ends
Ends in H.
How it starts
Begins with N.
Reveal the answer and explanation
The answer to Wordle #946 was
NORTH: The direction towards the pole to the left-hand side of someone facing east, specifically 0°, or (on another celestial object) the direction towards the pole lying on the northern side of the invariable plane.
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: 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: 23/100 (easier 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 #946, measured
This section compares NORTH'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, NORTH measured harder for the solver than about 23% of all 1,952 recorded answers to date. Its rating is easier for the solver. CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU leave about 72.3 possible answers; it has a 3-word _ORTH family.
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
TARSE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 9 of the 2,384 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, AUDIO left 286 candidates, about 32 times as many. ADIEU came back all gray. None of its letters appear in NORTH. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| TARSE | TARSE | 9 |
| CRANE | CRANE | 13 |
| TRACE | TRACE | 33 |
| SLATE | SLATE | 38 |
| STARE | STARE | 44 |
| ARISE | ARISE | 65 |
| SALET | SALET | 89 |
| RAISE | RAISE | 103 |
| 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 NORTH → It shows which guesses reduced the candidate pool on each turn.
Solver replay
One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to NORTH.
The solver reaches the answer in 3 guesses.
Common questions
- What was the Wordle answer for January 21, 2024?
- The Wordle answer for January 21, 2024 (puzzle #946) was NORTH.
- What does NORTH mean?
- NORTH: The direction towards the pole to the left-hand side of someone facing east, specifically 0°, or (on another celestial object) the direction towards the pole lying on the northern side of the invariable plane.
- Why was Wordle #946 tricky?
- NORTH is rated moderate for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: only one vowel.