About Wordle #973 (February 16, 2024)
Wordle #973 was published on Friday, February 16, 2024. It's the puzzle players around the world saw on that date, locked in at midnight local time and shared the next morning through the familiar yellow-and-green grid.
The answer was STASH, a 5-letter word that starts with S and ends with H. It was chosen by Tracy Bennett, the editor on duty for the February 16 slot.
This particular answer carries 1 vowel and 4 consonants, distributed across positions 3. The word uses 4 distinct letters, with S showing up 2 times. Players often found this one tough because of the repeated consonant and the tight vowel count.
If you're replaying this puzzle from the archive, start with a classic opener like CRANE, STARE, or ADIEU to nail the vowels in two moves. Once you know the shape, the suffix often gives the answer away. The day before this one was ASCOT and the day after was PSALM, so comparing those three answers is a quick way to spot whether the editor leaned toward a particular stem or vowel pattern that week.
For more context, the Wordle archive on this site indexes every puzzle back to launch, so you can scan the surrounding week or jump straight to a specific date. The solver tool on the same site will run the same letter-frequency logic against any guess you throw at it, which makes it handy for working through a stale grid you've been sitting on.