If you’re looking for the Wordle answer for July 16, 2024 read on. We’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solution. Today’s puzzle is medium difficult; I got it in four. Beware, there are spoilers below for July 16, Wordle #1,123! 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.)

Three of today’s letters are from our mnemonic. One is fairly common, and one is uncommon.

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

A fake.

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 and one “sometimes” vowel.

What letter does today’s Wordle start with?

Today’s word starts with D. 

What letter does today’s Wordle end with?

Today’s word ends with Y. 

What is the solution to today’s Wordle?

Ready? Today’s word is DECOY.

How I solved today’s Wordle

I started with RAISE and TOUCH, then guessed BLOND, which narrowed down all vowels and common consonants. There are a handful of words that include the confirmed letters, but only one fit: DECOY.

Wordle 1,123 4/6

⬛⬛⬛⬛🟨
⬛🟨⬛🟨⬛
⬛⬛🟨⬛🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle was hard. The hint was “to faint or nearly faint, especially over someone else” and the answer contained four common letters and one uncommon letter.

The answer to yesterday’s Wordle was SWOON.

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.

My cat Mira likes to do the same things at the same time, every day. At some point I put my hand under the bathroom door while brushing my teeth, which she took at an invitation to play “try to catch the fingers while adorably rolling around on the floor.”

Now every time I brush my teeth, Mira stares at me beside the end of the open door waiting for me to start the game. She established a loop: me brushing my teeth means she gets to play her favorite game. Living with a cat is all about these sorts of loops—things that happen at a given time one day are expected to happen at the same time the next. Anyone who has tried to feed a cat later than usual knows this extremely well, but it’s more than that. Mira likes to establish habits.

Now, you probably think you’re more intelligent than a cat, and in some ways you probably are. But I’m pretty sure you live in loops, just like a cat—there are things you do every day, like clockwork. Some of those habits you’re probably happy with; others, not so much. To change them, though, you’re going to need to spot them and change the context that triggers them. I’ve recently been thinking about my daily habits as being pretty similar to Mira’s loops. I am, when it comes to my habits, not that different from my cat. I will do the same things at the same time every day, and pick up new little routines as time goes on. But that doesn’t mean I have to keep them all.

How loops form

So where do these “loops” come from? Researchers from University College London summed it up like this: “As behaviors are repeated in consistent settings, they then begin to proceed more efficiently, and with less thought, as control of the behavior transfers to cues in the environment that activate an automatic response: a habit.”

In other words, doing the same thing every day in the same environment can eventually make an action automatic. You probably don’t have to remind yourself to brush your teeth—you habitually do it every time before you go to sleep (in my case, while playing with an energetic cat).

Researchers from Duke also note the importance of context to habit formation: “When responses and features of context occur in contiguity, the potential exists for associations to form between them, such that contexts come to cue responses.” My cat Mira has started to associate a specific context (me, in the bathroom, brushing my teeth) with a specific activity (waiting for my fingers to show up). We’ve formed a habit together. Of course, there are some habits I wish she didn’t have—eating house plants comes to mind. Luckily, there’s plenty of research out there to help us change those ones into something more manageable.

The best way to change habits

Those aforementioned researchers from Duke found that relying on self regulation to change a habit doesn’t work particularly well, especially during stressful times in your life. What does work, according to the essay, is changing your context. For example, if you want to break a habit that re-occurs every day, consider relocating during the time of the day the habit usually triggers. If you tend to crack open a beer every day at 5:30 p.m. and wish that you didn’t do that, try to stay away from your fridge. Better yet: don’t put any beers in your fridge in the first place.

For a while, Mira had a morning habit of chewing up one of our plants, every morning, before we got out of bed. This happened until we interrupted the habit using cat deterrent, a can of compressed air that harmlessly goes off when she tried to approach the plants in question. For a few days, we heard her trying to eat the plants but running away after the air can went off. Eventually she stopped trying to eat the plants, even when the cat deterrent wasn’t there. We changed the context and disrupted the habit. We broke the loop.

I’ve recently been thinking about my daily habits as being pretty similar to Mira’s loops. I will do the same things at the same time every day, and pick up new little routines as time goes on. But that doesn’t mean I have to keep them all. I changed Mira’s plant-eating loop by placing a deterrent. It took a few days, but eventually the loop broke and Mira stopped trying to eat my plant. I can do the same thing for myself. This could mean setting up applications to block distractions, or it could mean unfollowing the most addictive subreddits so that the website is less habit forming. I need to change the context.

I could list specific examples all day, but the basic point is this: if you want to change your habits, you can’t rely on willpower alone. You need to change the context that triggers those habits, and in the process, form some new (and hopefully more helpful) ones.

Groceries can be expensive, even if you’re not buying anything fancy. So when a redditor asked how to make $50 in grocery money last the week, the community came through with tons of cheap (and often healthy!) meal ideas.

Before we get into the grocery-shopping specifics, an important note: If you’re having trouble affording food, that’s what food banks and food pantries are for. Many people who qualify to use one don’t realize it. You don’t need to be unemployed or on SNAP benefits; you just have to meet the eligibility requirements for your local pantry, which are often quite accepting. If you don’t know how you’re going to make it through the week on the food budget you have, food pantries are for you.

Here are some grocery options that provide the most nutrition for the least money.

Rice (and beans)

Grains are an affordable staple, and rice is one of the cheapest to buy and easiest to prepare. Other grains, like wheat, are usually made into flour, bread, or pasta before they get to grocery store shelves. Rice comes in big ol’ sacks, and all you have to do is cook it, either with a rice cooker or just on the stovetop.

With rice you can make a variety of dirt-cheap dishes:

• Rice and beans (with or without extra meat and veggies; top with salsa or hot sauce). Try our rice and red beans recipe here.

• Fried rice (with eggs, veggies, or other add-ins).

• Rice with stir-fried anything.

• A rice bowl: Combine a scoop of cooked rice with an assortment of whatever leftovers or salad toppings you have in the fridge.

• Add rice (or grains of your choice) to turn a salad into something that can actually keep you full for hours.

Beans, lentils, and other legumes deserve a spotlight of their own. They’re great mixed with rice, but they can also work with other grains or even replace grains entirely. Legumes are high in fiber and are relatively high in protein (for a vegetable, anyway). They also make a nutritionally complete protein when paired with rice or other grains.

Chicken thighs

Meats tend to be more expensive than grains and veggies, but they also pack a lot of protein and tend to be filling. Some of the redditors on the thread recommended avoiding meats; others swear by them.

If you do buy meat, chicken thighs are one of the most cost-efficient, especially if you enjoy eating the skin. Remember that even though chicken breast is thought of as more “healthy,” that’s because it’s lower in calories. When you’re trying to stretch your grocery budget, a food that’s cheap and high calorie is just a good use of money. Thighs are nutritious, anyway.

Other affordable meats include whole chickens (if you don’t mind cutting them up or roasting them whole), stew meat, and ground beef, especially the higher-fat options (remember, more fat can be a good thing if you’re struggling to afford enough calories).

Look at the price per pound on everything in the meat section, and choose accordingly. Don’t know what to do with a new-to-you cut of meat? Serve it with rice, of course.

Potatoes

Don’t pass up the produce section. Besides cheap staples like onions and carrots, and marked-down produce that’s about to go bad (a steal if you can get it at the right time), there’s a hidden gem: potatoes.

Potatoes are cheap, and have some of the best nutrition per dollar according to some calculations. Especially if you eat the skins, you’ll get some vitamins and fiber while having a good cheap source of starch. Cooled leftover potatoes also contain resistant starch, which may help you to feel more full.

Canned and frozen veggies

Veggies don’t have to be fresh to be healthy. Often, the stuff that’s in the canned aisle or the freezer section is the cheapest, because the farms and companies that make it don’t have to account for veggies bruising or going bad between the farm and the store.

These veggies are perfectly nutritious, too—they often have more vitamins than their fresh counterparts. Grab whatever is cheapest, and season it with whatever you have around (butter and garlic salt are great). And throw some veggies into whatever else you happen to be making—maybe your rice and beans.

I’ve been writing about different productivity methods for Lifehacker for about a year now, and I continue to be shocked by the sheer variety (and quantity) of them that are out there. And while many fit right into my workflow, others led me to think, “Wow, that one wouldn’t work for me at all.”

It’s easy to learn about a technique, see its value, and decide to implement it, but if it’s not altogether aligned with your needs and your preferences, it’s probably not going to work as well for you as advertised. Rather than picking a productivity method that sounds good, you’re better off selecting one that is better suited to you, and how you work. Here’s what to look for.

The best productivity method if you’re a visual thinker…

If you need to visualize something to really understand it—like if you prefer to see graphs instead of reading about statistics or numbers—there are some solid productivity techniques out there for you. The best is probably the “pickle jar” technique, which asks you to imagine your daily capacity as a jar that can hold a finite amount of rocks, pebbles, and sand.

The rocks are your big tasks, pebbles are important tasks that aren’t immediately necessary, and sand is the little maintenance work you do to keep your day moving along. You load in your rocks first, then your pebbles, and finally the sand, to make sure you have enough time for it all. You can draw out a little diagram to help you prioritize your to-do list this way.

The best productivity method if you need motivation to get started…

With some productivity methods, you’re meant to just figure out what you need to do, then get cracking on it. That doesn’t work for everyone. It certainly doesn’t work for me—I need to get a burst of motivation or a spark of energy to keep grinding on a to-do list. The best option for people like me, in my opinion, is eating the frog. It’s a weird saying, but it boils down to tackling your most demanding, dreaded, or important task before you do anything else. In my experience, this works the best for me, because once I have the most pressing thing out of the way, I’m so relieved and proud of myself that anything else I have to do seems easy in comparison. If I can do the terrible thing, I can do anything.

On the other hand, the opposite approach can have a similar result, so try the 10-minute rule if eating the frog feels daunting but you still need a little motivational push. With this method, you blow through all those little tasks that take 10 minutes or less to do, like answering emails or folding the laundry, so you can concentrate on the bigger stuff. As minor as they are, the little things can feel overwhelming, and they’re easy to put off. If you get them all done with so they’re not weighing on you, you’ll feel better and more prepared to do everything else.

The best productivity method if you don’t feel connected to your work…

The tasks of daily life can be menial and if you’re not the kind of person who just buckles down and does what needs to be done, that can be a good reason to put it all off. If you can’t justify spending an afternoon cleaning up or a morning responding to emails, you might be motivated by purpose, so try the Results Planning Method (RPM), which comes from famed motivational speaker Tony Robbins, who outlined it in his Time of Your Life program and designed it to be motivational, fast, and efficient.

Not only does does the acronym stand for Rapid Planning Method, but it can also serve as a guide to what your day should look like: Results-oriented, purpose-driven, and built around a “massive action plan.” You have to consistently ask yourself what you want, what your purpose is, and what you need to do to achieve it. So maybe you won’t clean up just because it’s that time of the week to do it, but you’ll be more motivated to do it if you think of a broader purpose, like having the house in shape so you can have friends over for dinner. Doing something for the sake of it just doesn’t motivate everyone and that’s fine.

Another way you can feel connected to your tasks is by putting some extra thought into them. The Ivy Lee method calls on you to write down six tasks you have to do the next day. You should do this at the end of every work day (or at the end of the night, if the tasks are home-related). By writing them down, you get them out of your mind and know you’ll get to them the next day, so you can relax in the knowledge that you already have half a plan ready to go when you wake up.

The best productivity method if you need a detailed plan…

When you’re eating the frog or jotting down a few to-dos, you just kind of wing it, designating your “big task” and going for it. But sometimes, it’s nice to have a really detailed schedule in place. Here, I recommend the 3-3-3 method, but first, you’ll need to whip out the old Eisenhower matrix. The matrix forces you to rate your to-dos by urgency and importance.

Once you have everything categorized, you can move over to 3-3-3, which asks you to spend the first three hours of your day engaging in deep work on your most important project, then do three other urgent tasks that don’t require as much time, and finish up with three maintenance tasks. It’s a combination of eating the frog and visualizing the pickle jar, but it incorporates pretty strict scheduling to keep you on task.

Much like a two-sink bathroom spawns happiness, so does housing at least two peanut butters in your cupboard. Not so each person has their own jar (though, that’s not a bad idea), but because not all PBs are equal—and that’s a good thing. At minimum, I strongly believe every household needs a cooking peanut butter and a snacking peanut butter.

Best peanut butter to cook with

As a 90s kid, when it came to peanut butter, I mostly saw the hydrogenated likes of Skippy and Jif. It’s hella sweet, salty, and always the same creamy consistency. Then the natural, peanuts-only kind popped off with its robust nutty flavor and an inch of oil surfing on top. You have to stir it yourself to make it smooth, and get peanut oil all over the outside of the jar to really understand the appeal. 

I loved (and continued to love) peanut butter flavored cakes and cookies, so I started to use the natural type as an ingredient in my baking. From there I’d also use it in cooking, as a subtle way to add richness to a stew, or a bold way to add depth to a meat sauce. I use the same peanut butter on cheeseburgers that I do for my single-serving cheesecakes, natural and unsweetened.

Natural peanut butter is the one to keep in your cupboard as a versatile, flavor-packed ingredient for cooking and baking. I opt for chunky, unsalted natural peanut butter. It’s like having tahini paste versus sesame seeds, or orange juice instead of oranges. Unlike homogenized peanut butter, which has a list of added components, natural peanut butter is just ground peanuts. It won’t throw off your recipe with added salt or sugar, and the fats disperse easily into a recipe.

Keep a separate snacking peanut butter

Snacking on peanut butter happened later in life for me, and I’ll tell you what—natural peanut butter is a mess to snack on. It tastes great, but boy is it runny. If you scoop some onto a piece of toast, do not eat it on the go. Unless it is the most emaciated scraping of peanut butter, that layer will drip right off the edge and onto your pants. Forget dipping apple slices or celery into it and giving it to your five-year-old. A grown adult can’t eat the stuff near a computer.

This is when that classic, sweetened, and always-spreadable peanut butter is needed most. The hydrogenated oils in the likes of Peter Pan and some store brands helps keep the oils and peanut particles suspended. Plenty of sugar and a bit of salt just round out the snackability of the spread, making it something of a main course all on its own. This kind of peanut butter is ideal for smearing onto fruit, toast, muffins, or waffles. The thick, stable consistency makes it trustworthy for both adults and children to handle (save a run-of-the-mill mess). 

If you ever needed it, now you have an excuse to buy multiple jars of peanut butter. And as added good news, you can actually use either type in your morning peanut butter latte.