Today's Wordle Answer #545 - December 16, 2022 Solution And Hints

WordleBot solved today's Wordle puzzle in five tries and reported that many other players solved it in four. But we had a stroke of luck — it only took three guesses to figure out the answer! To help you finish just as fast, here are some clues that'll nudge you toward the answer on time. If you don't mind the spoiler, you can skip to the second section for the full reveal of the solution word.

The word of the day has two vowels, O and E, as its third and fifth letters, respectively. There are no repeated letters, and the word rhymes with Rome. It's a verb that can also function as a noun — as the former, it describes a thorough investigation into a person or a matter, and as the latter, a tool used for exploring a part of the body in surgery. The first letter is P, but if you removed it from the word, you'd be left with the French word for dress.

The solution to today's Wordle puzzle (#545 — December 16, 2022) is probe. Apart from the descriptions we've provided above, a probe also describes an "exploratory spacecraft designed to transmit information about its environment," according to OED, like NASA's Webb Telescope. Like many words in the English language, "probe" is of Latin origin; it traces back to Medieval Latin's "proba," which means examination, proof, or test, from late the Latin "probare," meaning to show or demonstrate.

Our lucky starting word today was plane, which turned two tiles green and eliminated all but 19 possible solutions. Next, we guessed the word prove. That left only one grey tile and two possible words, and the third time was the charm. It's the fastest we've solved a Wordle puzzle in a while, and we hope you find this article early enough to do even better. If you don't want to wait a whole day for another puzzle, check out these other Wordle-like games to keep you guessing.