Today’s “Wordle” No. 1189: Hints, tips and answers for Friday, September 20th

How to solve today's Wordle

The note: Sometimes this happens with fire, sometimes with mirrors.

The note: This wordle ends with a vowel.

OK, Spoilers below!

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The answer:

Wordle Analysis

Every day I check Wordle Bot to analyze my guessing game. You can check your Wordles with Wordle Bot. right here.

Luckily, I wasn't as bad as yesterday! In fact, I'm quite proud of my guessing game today. SPORE just got lucky. Three green boxes! Only nine words remained, but the problem, of course, was narrowing down the choices. I couldn't just randomly guess another word with S_O_E – there were too many! I thought of as many as I could and tried to find a word with as many letters of them as I could think of – and there it was: THINK. “T” from STORE. “H” from SHOVE. “T” and “N” from STONE. “T” and “K” from STOKE. And sure enough, that narrowed my choices down to just one word remaining: SMOKE won. Hooray!

Competitive Wordle Score

I get 1 point for guessing in three tries and another point for beating Wordle Bot who took four tries today. That's 2 points x 2 for 2XP Friday = 4 points for me! Hurrah again!

(It might be fun to keep track of all these points, or come up with a second mini-game where we spend the points we earned playing Competitive Wordle. Maybe I'll think of something.)

How to play competitive Wordle

• If you get a 1, guessing is worth 3 points, if you get a 2, guessing is worth 2 points, if you get a 3, guessing is worth 1 point, if you get a 4, guessing is worth 0 points, if you get a 5, guessing is worth -1 point, if you get a 6, guessing is worth -2 points and missing the Wordle is worth -3 points.
• If you beat your opponent, you get 1 point. If you draw, you get 0 points. And if you lose to your opponent, you get -1 point. Add these points together to get your score. Keep a daily score or just play for a new score every day.
• On Fridays you get 2XP, which means you double your points – positive or negative.
• You can keep a running record or just play day by day. Have fun!

Today’s Wordle etymology

The word smoke has its origins in Old English, where it was written smoca or smooch. This term refers to the visible steam or gases produced during combustion. It is derived from the Proto-Germanic word smuggle or smēkôwhich means “smoke” or “steam”. This in turn goes back to the Proto-Indo-European root complacent-which means “to emit smoke” or “to smolder”.

The word is also related to other Germanic languages, such as Dutch smoke and German Schmockwhich also means “smoke”. These roots suggest that the word originally referred to the rising fumes produced by fire and gradually evolved into its modern form, smokein English.

The concept has remained largely stable over time and always describes the visible product of combustion.

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