by How to Solve Today’s Wordle.
Happy Valentine’s Day, Wordlers! It’s a day of lovers, chocolate, wine, fancy dinners and deep pockets. Or, if you’re like me and happily single, a day to save money (although I might splurge on dinner for me, me and me).
The day itself is ostensibly a celebration of Saint Valentine, pictured below:
Saint Valentine
It’s kind of funny that a day celebrating romance is based on a religious figure, but then again, most holidays are tied to religion and feast or harvest days, like Lupercalia, which was celebrated on the Ides of February, or 15 of February. . Lupercalia was, perhaps not surprisingly, a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman god of agriculture, and the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus.
The festival included the sacrifice of a goat for fertility in the cave where Romulus and Remus were reportedly raised by wolves. The priests dipped the stripped goat skins in the sacrificial blood and then gently beat the women and fields of crops with the bloodied skin. This was believed to increase the fertility and yield of crops. The women would then place their names in a giant urn, and subsequently, the bachelors would draw names and pair up with the women for the following year (which could lead to marriage). How romantic!
This tradition evolved and ended up being Christianized on what we now call Valentine’s Day.
As for who Saint Valentine really was. . . this is a little more complicated to parse. The Catholic Church recognizes three different sweethearts, all of whom were martyred at one point or another.
One such lover was a third-century Roman priest who defied Emperor Claudius II’s decree that no young man should be allowed to legally marry. He performed marriages in secret – until he was caught and sentenced to death.
Another was Saint Valentine of Terni. Ironically, Claudius II also beheaded this Valentine. Another legend suggests that Valentine helped persecuted Christians escape Rome. Once arrested, Valentine fell in love with a woman (it has been suggested that she might be the jailer’s daughter) and sent her a letter signed “From your Valentine” which started the whole business.
Whatever the case, Valentine became one of the most famous and beloved saints in England and France in the Middle Ages. We often think of Valentine’s Day as a conspiracy by florists, chocolatiers and card makers to get us to spend money (just like the toy companies propped up Christmas!), but celebrating Valentine’s obviously goes back a long, long time.
All right, let’s do this Wordle!
How to Solve Today’s Wordle
The tip: A smaller body of water connected to an ocean.
The clue: This Wordle has more consonants than vowels.
The Answer (Spoilers):
.
.
.
Today’s Wordle Solution
There. This one was tricky! My initial guess, beach, which is where I wanted to be on Valentine’s Day, it was terrible, leaving me with a whopping 498 possibilities. To point I cut it like this, way down to just 8, but I realized that from here I had a lot of words ending in und. I decided to just drop one and go from there, but in hindsight a word like battery would have been better than found.
At this point, I knew I needed to narrow things down more. I just didn’t have enough guesses anymore. Worse eliminated injury It is round and gave me the ‘S’ for sound.
I got it at 5 which is a -1 on my score. I lost to Wordle Bot, who got this one out of three, so that’s another -1 for a grand total of -2. Too bad! I fell in love with Wordle this year, y’all. Sigh.
As always, I’d love it if you followed me here on this blog and subscribed to my YouTube channel and my Substack to stay up to date on all my TV, movie and video game reviews and coverage. Thanks!
