June 2024

Today, CISA, in partnership with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Australian Signals Directorate’s Australian Cyber Security Centre, and Canadian Cyber Security Center, released Exploring Memory Safety in Critical Open Source Projects. This guidance was crafted to provide organizations with findings on the scale of memory safety risk in selected open source software (OSS).

This joint guidance builds on the guide The Case for Memory Safe Roadmaps by providing a starting point for software manufacturers to create memory safe roadmaps, including plans to address memory safety in external dependencies which commonly include OSS. Exploring Memory Safety in Critical Open Source Projects also aligns with the 2023 National Cybersecurity Strategy and corresponding implementation plan, which discusses investing in memory safety and collaborating with the open source community—including the establishment of the interagency Open Source Software Security Initiative (OS3I) and investment in memory-safe programming languages.

CISA encourages all organizations and software manufacturers to review the methodology and results found in the guidance to:

Reduce memory safety vulnerabilities;
Make secure and informed choices;
Understand the memory-unsafety risk in OSS;
Evaluate approaches to reducing this risk; and
Continue efforts to drive risk-reducing action by software manufacturers.

To learn more about taking a top-down approach to developing secure products, visit CISA’s Secure by Design webpage.

If you’re looking for the Wordle answer for June 26, 2024 read on. We’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solution. Today’s puzzle is harder; I got it in five. Beware, there are spoilers below for June 26, Wordle #1,103! Keep scrolling if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Wordle game.

How to play Wordle

Wordle lives here on the New York Times website. A new puzzle goes live every day at midnight, your local time.

Start by guessing a five-letter word. The letters of the word will turn green if they’re correct, yellow if you have the right letter in the wrong place, or gray if the letter isn’t in the day’s secret word at all. For more, check out our guide to playing Wordle here, and my strategy guide here for more advanced tips. (We also have more information at the bottom of this post, after the hints and answers.)

Ready for the hints? Let’s go!

Does today’s Wordle have any unusual letters?

We’ll define common letters as those that appear in the old typesetters’ phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU. (Memorize this! Pronounce it “Edwin Shirdloo,” like a name, and pretend he’s a friend of yours.)

Four of today’s letters are from our mnemonic! The other one is less common.

Can you give me a hint for today’s Wordle?

A step in baking bread.

Does today’s Wordle have any double or repeated letters?

There are no repeated letters today.

How many vowels are in today’s Wordle?

There are two vowels.

What letter does today’s Wordle start with?

Today’s word starts with K.

What letter does today’s Wordle end with?

Today’s word ends with D.

What is the solution to today’s Wordle?

Ready? Today’s word is KNEAD.

How I solved today’s Wordle

I started with RAISE, followed by NOTCH and PLUGS to eliminate likely consonants (and the remaining vowels, by extension). Next I tried MIKED based on letters remaining in possible solutions, which left KNEAD as the answer.

Wordle 1,103 5/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨
🟨⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛
⬛⬛🟨🟨🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle was easier. The hint was “something you might do with an incredible meal” and the answer contained four common letters and one uncommon letter.

The answer to yesterday’s Wordle was SAVOR.

A primer on Wordle basics

The idea of Wordle is to guess the day’s secret word. When you first open the Wordle game, you’ll see an empty grid of letters. It’s up to you to make the first move: type in any five-letter word.

Now, you can use the colors that are revealed to get clues about the word: Green means you correctly guessed a letter, and it’s in the correct position. (For example, if you guess PARTY, and the word is actually PURSE, the P and R will be green.)

Yellow means the letter is somewhere in the word, but not in the position you guessed it. (For example, if you guessed PARTY, but the word is actually ROAST, the R, A and T will all be yellow.)
Gray means the letter is not in the solution word at all. (If you guessed PARTY and everything is gray, then the solution cannot be PURSE or ROAST.)

With all that in mind, guess another word, and then another, trying to land on the correct word before you run out of chances. You get six guesses, and then it’s game over.

The best starter words for Wordle

What should you play for that first guess? The best starters tend to contain common letters, to increase the chances of getting yellow and green squares to guide your guessing. (And if you get all grays when guessing common letters, that’s still excellent information to help you rule out possibilities.) There isn’t a single “best” starting word, but the New York Times’s Wordle analysis bot has suggested starting with one of these:

CRANE
TRACE
SLANT
CRATE
CARTE

Meanwhile, an MIT analysis found that you’ll eliminate the most possibilities in the first round by starting with one of these:

SALET
REAST
TRACE
CRATE
SLATE

Other good picks might be ARISE or ROUND. Words like ADIEU and AUDIO get more vowels in play, but you could argue that it’s better to start with an emphasis on consonants, using a starter like RENTS or CLAMP. Choose your strategy, and see how it plays out.

How to win at Wordle

We have a few guides to Wordle strategy, which you might like to read over if you’re a serious student of the game. This one covers how to use consonants to your advantage, while this one focuses on a strategy that uses the most common letters. In this advanced guide, we detail a three-pronged approach for fishing for hints while maximizing your chances of winning quickly.

The biggest thing that separates Wordle winners from Wordle losers is that winners use their guesses to gather information about what letters are in the word. If you know that the word must end in -OUND, don’t waste four guesses on MOUND, ROUND, SOUND, and HOUND; combine those consonants and guess MARSH. If the H lights up in yellow, you know the solution.

One more note on strategy: the original Wordle used a list of about 2,300 solution words, but after the game was bought by the NYT, the game now has an editor who hand-picks the solutions. Sometimes they are slightly tricky words that wouldn’t have made the original list, and sometimes they are topical. For example, FEAST was the solution one Thanksgiving. So keep in mind that there may be a theme.

Wordle alternatives

If you can’t get enough of five-letter guessing games and their kin, the best Wordle alternatives, ranked by difficulty, include:

Wheeldle, which lets you play one puzzle after another
Dordle and Quordle, which ask you to play two (Dordle) or four (Quordle) puzzles at the same time, with the same guesses. There is also Octordle, with eight puzzles, and Sedecordle, with 16.
Waffle, which shows you several five-letter words, scrambled in a grid; you play by swapping the letters around until you solve.
Absurdle, which changes the solution after each guess, but needs to stay consistent with its previous feedback. You have to strategically back it into a corner until there is only one possible word left; then you guess it, and win.
Squabble, in which you play Wordle against other people with a timer running. You take damage if you spend too much time between guesses; winner is the last one standing.
Antiwordle, in which you are trying not to guess the day’s solution. You’re required to reuse any letters that you (oops) guessed correctly, so the longer it takes you, the better you are at the game.

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Today’s Wordle Hints (and Answer) for Wednesday, June 26, 2024