You know that feeling when you open the grid, type in your go-to starter, and see absolutely nothing but gray? It’s humbling. Honestly, it’s why we keep coming back to this little green-and-yellow habit every morning. Today is Saturday, January 17, 2026, and if you’re currently staring at a screen with three guesses down and your streak on the line, take a breath. You aren't alone. Today’s puzzle, #1673, is a bit of a spicy one.
The Wordle Answer Today NYT: Spilling the Beans
Let’s get the big reveal out of the way before your coffee gets cold.
The wordle answer today nyt for Saturday, January 17, is FIERY.
It’s an adjective. It’s intense. It’s also a word that trips people up because of that pesky "IE" or "EI" internal debate we all have. If you guessed "FIREY" (with an E), don't feel bad. That’s a super common mistake, but Wordle is a stickler for the correct five-letter spelling.
Hints if You’re Still Trying to Play Along
Maybe you didn’t want the answer just yet. If you’re a "give me a nudge" kind of player, here’s how the logic breaks down for #1673.
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The word starts with F. It ends with Y.
It’s got two vowels—specifically an I and an E.
There are no repeating letters. That’s usually a relief, but the structure of FIERY is actually pretty deceptive. Most people find the R and the Y fairly quickly, but pinning down that I-E sequence in the middle? That’s where the struggle happens.
Why Today’s Word is Such a Streak-Killer
What makes FIERY so difficult is the phonetics. When we say the word, we hear "fire," so our brains desperately want to put an E after the R or keep the R-E-Y structure. But the English language is weird. In this case, the E comes before the R.
I’ve seen some seasoned players on Reddit and Twitter (well, X, whatever we're calling it now) complaining that they wasted three guesses just trying to find where the vowels lived. If you used a starting word like ARISE or ADIEU, you probably felt pretty good early on. You found the vowels. But "found" and "placed" are two very different things in the New York Times ecosystem.
Expert Tips for Wordle 1308 and Beyond
A lot of people ask what the "perfect" strategy is. Truthfully? There isn't one. But there are better ways to fail.
If you are stuck on a word like FIERY, you have to look at the letter frequency. R and Y are high-frequency consonants for the end of a word. When you see a Y at the end, your brain should immediately start testing "vowel + consonant + Y" patterns.
- Check for the "sometimes" vowel: The Y is doing heavy lifting here.
- Avoid the trap: Don't get stuck in a "rhyme hole." If you have _ _ E R Y, don't just guess EVERY, QUERY, or FIERY without ruling out the first letters first.
- Use a burner word: If you have two guesses left and four possible words, use a word that combines all the possible starting letters. It’ll cost you a turn, but it saves your streak.
Looking Back at Recent NYT Puzzles
The New York Times has been on a bit of a run lately. Yesterday, on January 16, the answer was RACER. Before that, we had CHASM and AVOID.
Notice a pattern? They aren't using incredibly obscure Latin roots, but they are using words with tricky internal structures. CHASM has that silent-ish H. RACER has the double-letter trap. And now FIERY gives us a vowel-heavy center that defies how we usually spell "fire."
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The game’s editor, Tracy Bennett, has a knack for picking words that feel obvious once you see them but feel impossible when you’re looking at a blank row. It’s a psychological game as much as a linguistic one.
How to Protect Your Wordle Streak Tomorrow
If today was a close call, it might be time to refresh your starting word. While CRANE and SLATE are statistically the best according to the bots, they can get boring.
I personally like STARE because it clears out the most common vowels and the R-T-S block. If you played STARE today, you would have seen the R and E turn yellow, which is a solid start.
Tomorrow is a new day. Keep your head up, don't let the grid get to you, and maybe double-check your spelling before hitting enter. Those "IE" words are out to get us.
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To keep your edge for the next puzzle, try practicing with the Wordle Archive or the NYT's other offerings like Connections and Strands to keep your brain tuned to these specific letter patterns. If you struggled with the "I-E" placement in FIERY, spend a few minutes looking up five-letter words with vowel-heavy centers to build that mental muscle memory for the next time the New York Times decides to get tricky.