You probably missed it. Or maybe you're here because that final guess just didn't click and you need to know if you were even close. Honestly, Wordle 1396 for Tuesday, January 13, 2026, was a bit of a curveball. The answer was ABORT.
It’s one of those words. You see the 'A' and the 'O' and you think you’ve got it. Then the 'B' shows up and suddenly you’re staring at a blank row for ten minutes. It happens to the best of us. Even the pros at The New York Times Wordle Bot reported a higher-than-average "skill" requirement for this specific puzzle.
What was the wordle yesterday and why did it trip people up?
Let's talk about the structure of ABORT. It starts with a vowel. That’s the first trap. Most players start with words like ADIEU or STARE. If you started with STARE, you got the 'R' and the 'T' in yellow, but no green. That leaves you wandering in the wilderness of the alphabet.
People hate starting with 'A'. We like consonants. We like the safety of a 'C' or an 'S'. But ABORT forces you to confront that leading vowel immediately. If you didn't get that 'A' in the first spot by guess three, you were likely burning through turns trying to find where the 'T' went.
Then there's the 'B'. It’s a low-frequency letter. It’s not rare like 'Z' or 'Q', but it’s definitely not a 'L' or 'N'. When you’re looking at _ _ O R T, your brain naturally goes to SHORT, SPORT, or FORTY (if you’re not paying attention to the five-letter limit). Your brain doesn't naturally want to put a 'B' at the start of that sequence unless you're a seasoned solver.
The linguistics of the Wordle 1396 solution
Wait, is ABORT a "mean" word? Not really. It’s a common verb. It’s used in computing, space missions, and medicine. But in the context of a game, it feels heavy. Josh Wardle, the original creator, famously filtered the initial list of 12,000 five-letter words down to about 2,300 "common" words. The NYT has since tweaked this list. They try to keep it accessible. They want you to win, mostly.
Yesterday’s puzzle relied heavily on the 'RT' ending. This is a common phonetic cluster in English. Words like CHART, SMART, and START are usually the first things players guess. If you guessed CHART, you felt great. You had three green letters! But then you had to find the 'A' and the 'B'.
Actually, if you had _ _ A R T, you might have guessed HEART or APART. If you guessed APART, you were so close it probably hurt. You had the 'A', the 'R', and the 'T'. You just needed to swap that 'P' for a 'B' and find the 'O'.
Digging into the Wordle statistics from January 13
According to crowdsourced data from various Wordle tracking communities, the average score for yesterday was 4.2. That's slightly harder than the typical 3.8 to 3.9 average.
Why? Because of the "Rabbit Hole" effect.
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The Rabbit Hole is when you have four letters correct and there are six possible words.
- _ O R T S
- _ O R T Y
- _ O R T E
Wait, those aren't all five letters. Let's look at the actual trap for ABORT. It was the 'O-R-T' ending.
- COURT
- SHORT
- SPORT
- SNORT
If you had the 'O', 'R', and 'T' in green, you might have spent guesses 3, 4, 5, and 6 just cycling through those consonants. If you didn't have the 'A' or the 'B' yet, you were basically playing a lottery. This is where strategy beats luck.
How to avoid the "Almost Got It" trap
Experienced players use "throwaway" words. If it’s guess four and you have _ O R T, don't just guess SHORT. If the possibilities are SHORT, SNORT, and ABORT, you should guess a word that contains 'S', 'N', and 'B'. Even if that word isn't the answer, it eliminates three possibilities at once. It’s a sacrifice play. You lose a turn to guarantee a win on the next one.
Most casual players refuse to do this. They want the "Genius" or "Magnificent" rating. They want the win in four. So they gamble. Yesterday, the gamblers lost.
Is Wordle getting harder in 2026?
There’s a lot of chatter on Reddit and Twitter (or X, whatever we're calling it this week) about the NYT making the game harder. Honestly? The word list hasn't changed that much. But the editors are definitely picking words that have more "trap" potential.
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We saw this last month with words that have repeated letters or unusual vowel placements. ABORT fits that "unusual" vibe because of the 'B' and the 'O-R-T' combo. It’s not that the words are obscure. It’s that they are strategically difficult.
Think about the word CACAO. That was a nightmare. Compared to that, ABORT is a walk in the park. But it still requires a specific type of mental flexibility. You have to be willing to move vowels around.
Semantic variations and your brain
When we play Wordle, our brains use something called "orthographic processing." It’s how we recognize letter patterns. When you see 'RT' at the end of a word, your brain screams START. It doesn't scream ABORT. This is because "start" is a more frequent word in daily conversation than "abort," despite both being common.
The NYT Wordle editor, Tracy Bennett, has mentioned in interviews that the goal is to find a balance between "too easy" and "impossible." ABORT sits right in that sweet spot. It's recognizable, but it's not the first thing you think of.
Strategy for the next time you see a word like ABORT
If you’re still thinking about what was the wordle yesterday and feeling frustrated, use it as a learning moment.
- Vowel Hunting: If you get a yellow 'O' and 'A', try to find their home immediately. Don't let them sit in yellow for three turns.
- Consonant Diversity: Don't just stick to R, S, T, L, N. If you’re stuck, bring in the B, P, or M.
- The "Starting A" Factor: Many five-letter words start with 'A'. ADAPT, ADOPT, ABUSE, ALIVE. If you have an 'A' but it's not in the middle, try it at the start.
Real-world examples of Wordle 1396 fails
I saw a post yesterday where a user had:
- Guess 1: STARE (Yellow R, T)
- Guess 2: TRAIN (Yellow T, R, A)
- Guess 3: TRACK (Green A, R; Yellow T)
- Guess 4: PARTY (Green A, R, T)
- Guess 5: CHART (Green A, R, T)
- Guess 6: QUART (Green A, R, T)
They missed it. They had the 'A-R-T' locked in from guess three, but they spent the rest of the game trying to put a consonant at the beginning. They never even considered that the 'A' wasn't the second letter. They never considered a word starting with a vowel.
That is the "Wordle Hard Mode" curse. If you play on Hard Mode, you are forced to use the letters you've found. This makes words like ABORT nearly impossible if you get the 'A-R-T' in the wrong spots early on. You get locked into a pattern and you can't escape.
Final thoughts on yesterday's puzzle
Wordle 1396 wasn't a trick. It was a test of flexibility. It reminded us that the English language doesn't always follow the "Consonant-Vowel-Consonant" rule we learned in kindergarten. Sometimes, you just have to abort your current strategy and try something completely different.
If you’re looking at your stats today and seeing a broken streak, don't sweat it. The beauty of the game is that there’s always a new one at midnight.
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Actionable steps for your next game
To improve your consistency and avoid another "ABORT" situation, try these specific adjustments to your gameplay:
- Change your starting word daily: Using the same word every day (STARE, ARISE) is efficient, but it makes your brain lazy. Changing it up forces you to see new patterns.
- Focus on the "ignored" letters: If you’ve reached guess four and haven't used letters like 'B', 'V', or 'W', try to incorporate them into a "solver" word that checks for multiple possibilities.
- Analyze the Wordle Bot: After you finish, look at the NYT Wordle Bot. It will show you exactly where you made a "luck" guess versus a "skill" guess. It’s the fastest way to get better.
- Memorize common endings: 'ING', 'ED', 'ER', and 'RT' are huge. If you have those letters, don't assume the word follows the standard prefix. Try moving the vowels to the very front.