So, you missed it. Or maybe you got it, but it took way too many tries and now you’re just scrolling to see if everyone else struggled as much as you did. Yesterday’s Wordle was a bit of a tease. Honestly, it wasn't the hardest word in the world, but it had just enough "vowel-heavy" energy to make people second-guess their usual openers.
If you’re looking for the NYT Wordle answer yesterday for Wednesday, January 14, 2026, the word was AVOID.
It’s one of those words that looks easy on paper but feels like a trap when you’re staring at a bunch of gray tiles. You’ve probably used it in a sentence ten times today without thinking, yet when it comes to a five-letter grid, your brain just wants to suggest things like "ADIEU" or "AUDIO" instead.
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What made AVOID so tricky?
Most people start their Wordle journey with a vowel-heavy opener. It’s the classic strategy. If you used AUDIO as your first guess, you actually hit the jackpot yesterday. You would have seen the A, U, D, I, and O all react. Specifically, you would have had a yellow A, a gray U, a yellow D, a green I, and a yellow O.
That’s a lot of information for a first turn.
But even with four out of five letters identified, the placement is where the frustration sets in. Moving that D and A around while keeping the I in the fourth slot leads to a few "almost" words before you land on the actual solution. It's the "O-I-D" ending that usually trips people up because we are so conditioned to look for "E-D" or "I-N-G" patterns.
The stats behind the solve
According to the Wordle Bot (the NYT’s own analytical tool that judges our failures), the average player took about 3.8 guesses to find the NYT Wordle answer yesterday. That’s pretty standard, but the "failed" percentage was slightly higher than usual. Why? Because people got stuck in the "vowel loop."
When you see A, O, and I, you start thinking of words like RADIO or ADIEU. If you guessed RADIO, you were incredibly close, but that R wasted a slot.
- Wordle Number: 1670
- The Answer: AVOID
- Vowels: 3 (A, O, I)
- Consonants: 2 (V, D)
- Repeat Letters: None
Is Wordle getting harder in 2026?
There’s a persistent rumor every few months that the New York Times is intentionally picking more obscure words. We saw it with GUMBO earlier this week. People lost their minds over that one. But the reality is that the dictionary hasn't changed. The list of potential answers was mostly set years ago, though the NYT does occasionally curate the order to keep things interesting.
AVOID is a common verb. It’s not a "NYT word" like TAPIR or CAULK. The difficulty usually comes from the letter structure rather than the word’s obscurity. Having a word start with a vowel (A) and end with a consonant (D) while sandwiching three other letters is a structural pattern that isn't as common as the "Consonant-Vowel-Consonant-Vowel-Consonant" flow we prefer.
Real-world logic for better guesses
If you struggled with yesterday's puzzle, you might want to switch up your starting word. While STARE and SLATE are statistically the best for narrowing down the most common letters, they would have left you with a lot of gray yesterday.
Actually, players who used ARISE or ALIVE found themselves in a much better position. They caught the A and the I early. If you caught the V in ALIVE, you were basically done by guess three.
Moving forward to your next streak
The best thing about Wordle is that yesterday's failure (or narrow escape) doesn't matter once the clock strikes midnight. You get a fresh grid.
If you want to keep your streak alive, remember that "V" is a high-risk, high-reward letter. It doesn't show up often, but when it does—like in AVOID—it usually eliminates hundreds of possibilities instantly. Don't be afraid to throw a "V" or a "D" into your second guess if your first guess was all vowels.
Check your stats. If your "Current Streak" is still intact, you survived one of the more annoying vowel-shuffles of the month. If it reset to zero, well, at least you aren't the only one who got stuck wondering where that O was supposed to go.
To improve your game for tomorrow, try focusing on "elimination words" for your second turn. If your first word gives you two yellows, don't try to solve it immediately. Instead, pick a word that uses five entirely different, common letters. This narrows the field much faster than "guessing" at the answer. You'll find that your average score drops from a 4 or 5 down to a consistent 3.
It's all about the process, even when the word is as simple as AVOID.