January 1 Wordle 561 Answer and Hints

Wordle is back with its first puzzle of the new year. In order to win today, some players might want a little help with the rules, the answer, or just might want to be given the whole spoiler for the word of the day.

How To Play Wordle

Wordle is a short little game by the New York Times Games. Players can head to the site once a day to try to guess a mystery five-letter word. Players have a total of six tries. But in order to even try this little puzzle game, word puzzle fans will need to learn the rules first.

First, players will need to choose a starting word. This five-letter Wordle word should be:

A five-letter word.
A real word.
A word with a lot of common letters in it.
Not a previous puzzle answer or a plural noun ending in S or ES. While these can be used as guesses, they cannot be answers to new Wordle puzzles.
A word with five different letters in it.

Next, type the chosen word into the site and press enter. This will make the letters of the chosen word change colors, giving players clues to the real answer.

Green letters are right.
Gray letters are wrong.
Yellow letters are right but in the wrong place in the word.

Given these clues, players have just total six tries to get to the word of the day before they lose. Puzzles reset daily at midnight local time, meaning there is only one puzzle per day. Since there is only one word a day for everyone, be sure to use the spoiler-free share button to keep from spoiling it for everyone else on social media.