Today's Wordle Answer #582 - January 22, 2023 Solution And Hints

This week in Wordle has featured some unusual words, and the surprise continues today. Today's puzzle answer is a British term for someone you're chummy with or someone who exudes an aura that immediately makes you feel like you've known them forever. Since we're not all British, this word might not readily occur to you, and since a Wordle fail is only six guesses away, we reckon you could use some help. Here are a few hints that should help you unravel the answer before you run out of attempts.

The word you're looking for has two vowels, A and E, and unlike yesterday's quirky answer word, there are no repeated letters. It rhymes with "Haiti," and if you removed its last letter, you'd have the biological term for an animal's sexual partner, or the act of pairing animals for breeding. With the last letter still out of the picture, you could replace the first letter with L to have the verb for when someone is behind schedule, or dead. Replacing with H would give you the noun that's the opposite of love and with G the name of a barrier in a wall.

If today's answer is still a mystery to you, or you skipped the teasers because you prefer to cut to the chase, the solution you seek is "matey." It's a diminutive of the noun "mate," which means "associate, fellow, comrade," from Middle Low German "gemate," meaning an eating companion or one with whom you eat at the same table, which is a figurative depiction of closeness or intimacy.

It traces back to Proto-Germanic "*ga-matjon," which means "(one) having food (*matiz) together (*ga-)" (via Etymonline). "Mate" evolved to mean "one of a wedded pair" around the 1500s, and it began to be popularized as a form of address by sailors and other workmen around the mid-15th century.

Because our opening guess today is WordleBot's (and other experts') recommended Wordle starting word, we made short work of the puzzle. Luckily, it contains three out of the five letters in the bingo word, and it only took us two more tries to figure out the winning word. We hope you do just as well, or even better, and if you like a challenge, check out these other puzzles similar to Wordle.