Today's Wordle Answer #589 - January 29, 2023 Solution And Hints

Today's Wordle answer is a flavor that might leave a lingering aftertaste in your mouth and on your hands. It's not an uncommon word, and its letter combination isn't unusual either, but a Wordle failure is only ever six guesses away, so here are some hints that might shorten your journey to the answer. If you want an even shorter route, you can skip to the second section — we reveal the full solution there, no teasers.

The word you're solving for is an adjective with one vowel, I, as its third letter. There are no repeated letters, and the word is a figurative description of something or someone with dubious or questionable qualities. You could replace the first letter with a D, and you'd have the British slang for an attractive man or an adjective that describes something as scandalous or gossipy. If you swapped the first letter with W instead, you'd have another adjective that qualifies something as ineffectual or lacking in grit or determination.

For the sake of players who like a mental challenge, we don't want to include a dead giveaway as a clue, but here's one that might set off the light bulb for you if you're still unsure: the answer is a seafood smell or flavor.

Today's winning word is "fishy," which means for something to literally taste or smell like fish, or figuratively, to arouse suspicion. The original meaning of the word is in the former context, and it's a diminutive of the word "fish," which originates from Old English "fisc" (via Etymonline). It was only used for this meaning from the 1500s until the 1800s, when it took on the added meaning of dubiousness or shadiness, possibly based on the slippery quality of fish, or their unpleasant odor. 

It only took three tries for us to crack the code, luckily. Our opening guess, "bliss," turned two tiles yellow and eliminated all but 53 possible answer words. After that, we tried the word "phish," and although it didn't color any new tiles, it left only two possible answers — "sight" and "fishy." We made a lucky third guess, finishing one step ahead of WordleBot. We hope you do better and, like us, round off this week in Wordle on a triumphant note. And since we're on the topic of fish, you might be interested in finding out how much microplastic you're unknowingly ingesting when you have seafood.