Today's Wordle Answer #491 - October 23, 2022 Solution And Hints

If you're a frequent Wordle player, you'll know that repeated letters add a challenging twist to the game. It's bad enough when a word has a letter that's repeated twice, but today's Wordle answer has one that's repeated three times, so it's extra challenging. And we're not the only ones who think so — WordleBot reports that most players didn't solve the puzzle until the sixth guess. To help you solve the puzzle faster and avoid risking your streak, here are some clues to nudge you toward the answer. As always, we'll also reveal the full answer in the second section, so you can head on there if you don't mind the spoiler.

The word you're looking for is a noun in common usage and is what a British person might call their mom. It's also the title of the 1999 blockbuster movie starring Brendan Fraser as Rick O'Connell, who mistakenly wakes up an evil [solution word] during an archaeological excavation at the fictional city of Hamunaptra in Egypt. There's only one vowel, "U," and the last letter is "Y." If you replaced the first letter of this word with "T," you'd have a word that's the informal term for the stomach.

The solution to today's Wordle puzzle (#491 — October 23, 2022) is mummy. A mummy is a body embalmed and ceremonially preserved in the manner of the ancient Egyptians, usually by removal of the internal organs, treatment with natron and resin, and wrapping in bandages (via Merriam-Webster). Mummy is also the British spelling of mommy, the informal word for mom or mother. The word mummy is from Medieval Latin's "mumia," and from Arabic "mumiyah," meaning embalmed body. It also has roots in the Persian "mumiya," from "mum," which means "wax" (via Etymonline).

We played by the rulebook today and chose slate, one of the recommended Wordle starting words, as our opening guess. It didn't yield anything in terms of yellow or green tiles, but at least we had eliminated five letters. Our next guess, pouch, did turn one tile yellow. After that, we tried the word murky, which turned three tiles green and made the answer apparent. We hope you have even better luck, and here are more games like Wordle if you want more mental exercises.