You’re staring at those five empty boxes and your first guess just flopped. It happens to the best of us. Today is Saturday, January 17, 2026, and if you’ve already fired off your opening gambit, there’s a massive chance you’re looking at a yellow or green second letter O. It feels like a gift. Usually, an O in that second slot is the backbone of a dozen common words, but today? Today it’s a bit of a psychological minefield.
Wordle 1,308 is live. People are losing their streaks.
Honestly, the letter O is the ultimate "blessing and a curse" in the NYT Wordle universe. When it sits in that second position, your brain immediately starts cycling through the "heavy hitters." You think of power, sound, total, or court. It’s a comfortable spot. It feels safe. But that safety is exactly why players get trapped in "hard mode" loops where they burn four guesses trying to figure out if they’re looking at model, moral, or motor.
The vowel fatigue is real
Most expert players—the ones who spend way too much time looking at Josh Wardle’s original word list or the updated New York Times curated library—know that the second letter O is statistically one of the most frequent occurrences in five-letter English words. It’s right up there with A and E. But because it's so common, it doesn't actually narrow the field as much as you'd think.
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If you get a green O on guess one, you haven't actually won. You’ve just entered a very crowded room.
Think about the structure of English. We love a consonant-vowel-consonant start. This is why words like solar, robin, and today (meta, right?) are so easy for our brains to conjure. When the New York Times took over the game from Josh Wardle back in 2022, they started leaning into words that felt "common" but had tricky internal structures. They aren't necessarily looking for obscure 18th-century vocabulary anymore. They’re looking for words that have too many neighbors.
Why today's O is a strategic nightmare
If you're playing today’s puzzle, you have to be careful about "The Trap." This is a known phenomenon in the gaming community where you have four out of five letters correct, and you just keep swapping the first letter.
Imagine if the word was COLLY. You guess HOLLY, then POLLY, then MOLLY. Suddenly, your 400-day streak is dust. While today's word isn't quite that cruel, having that second letter O opens the door to several similar-sounding families.
Data from the WordleBot—the NYT’s own analytical tool—consistently shows that players who prioritize "information-gathering" over "guessing the answer" finish in fewer turns. If you see that O early on, stop. Don't try to solve it on guess two. You need to use a word that eliminates other vowels like I and U immediately. Even if you know it’s an O, you need to know what isn't there.
The linguistics of the second slot
Why is the second position so dominant for vowels? It’s phonotactics. In English, we rarely start words with double consonants that don't include an L, R, or S. So, the second letter is almost always the "engine" of the syllable.
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When you look at the second letter O, you're often looking at a word that is either a "medial O" (short sound like hot) or a "long O" (like total). Today’s puzzle leans into that foundational structure. According to research by linguists who have scraped the Wordle dictionary, O appears in the second position more often than it appears in the third or fourth. It is the anchor.
However, the "O" also hides the "OU" and "OI" diphthongs. If you aren't testing for the letter U alongside that O, you’re playing a dangerous game. Many players forget that count, mount, and round are always lurking in the shadows, waiting to eat your guesses.
How to pivot when you see yellow or green
So, you’ve got the O. Now what?
- Check for the "E" ending. A massive percentage of words with a second letter O follow the O-C-C-E or O-C-V-E pattern. Think wrote or movie.
- Test the "Y" early. Five-letter words love ending in Y, especially when the second letter is a vowel. Words like money or hobby are classic Wordle fodder.
- Avoid the "Double Letter" panic. Just because you have an O doesn't mean there isn't another one. Robot, colon, floor. People hate guessing double letters, which is exactly why the editors use them to break streaks.
The current meta of Wordle involves a lot of "vulture" play. You wait for the puzzle to reveal its shape. If you’re using a starter like ADIEU or ARISE, you might have missed the O entirely on the first turn. If you use CRANE or SLATE, you’re likely still hunting for that primary vowel.
Real-world stats and the 2026 Wordle climate
By now, in early 2026, the game has evolved. We’ve seen words like guano and knoll rattle the community. The "O" in the second spot has been featured in some of the most failed puzzles in the game's history.
Why? Because it’s boring.
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We overlook the boring. We search for the quartz or the xylyl (okay, that’s not a Wordle word, but you get the point). When we see a simple second letter O, we move too fast. We assume it’s a word we know, and we miss the subtle placement of a flanking consonant like a K or a W.
Actionable steps for your next guess
If you are currently looking at a yellow or green second letter O in today’s puzzle, do not go for the win yet.
- Burn a turn. If you have three guesses left and multiple possibilities, use a word that contains as many different consonants as possible. A word like GLYPH or SPURN can tell you more about the word FORGE than actually guessing FORGE would.
- Look at the keyboard. Literally. Look at the letters you haven't used. If you have an O in the second spot, look at how many "front-heavy" consonants are left. Is the S gone? Is the C gone? If the "power consonants" are used up, you’re likely looking at a word starting with a blend like BR, TR, or PL.
- Check the "U". Seriously. The relationship between O and U in English five-letter words is a frequent source of frustration. If your O is green, try a word with a U just to be safe.
Don't let the simplicity of a second letter O fool you into a quick loss. The NYT loves a word that looks easy but has four different variations. Slow down. Think about the common clusters. Today is a day for logic, not for "vibes" guessing.
Focus on the consonants that surround that O. That's where the actual answer is hiding. Once you clear the noise, the solution usually just clicks into place. Go get that 3/6 score. Regardless of how many tries it takes, the O is your anchor—just don't let it become an anchor that sinks your streak.