Working on today’s five-letter puzzle? You can play the daily game on the New York Times’ Wordle page. If you want gentle nudges before the solution, start with the clues below. The full answer is farther down.

Today’s hints for Wordle #1553

  • No letters repeat.
  • There are two vowels.
  • The word begins with L.
  • The word ends with R.
  • It shares its name with an NBC talk show that ran from 1988 to 2001.
  • Definition clue: describes something that follows something else.

Ready for the answer?

Spoiler ahead.

Today’s Wordle (#1553) is: LATER.

It’s commonly used as an adverb or adjective meaning “after” or “subsequent.” A daily Wordle review pegs this puzzle at an average of about 4.4 guesses, which tracks with a straightforward letter set and clean positional signals once you lock in the opener.

Yesterday and recent solutions

  • Sept. 18 (#1552): KNIFE
  • Sept. 17 (#1551): TEETH
  • Sept. 16 (#1550): LEFTY
  • Sept. 15 (#1549): ALONG
  • Sept. 14 (#1548): NOISY

Quick strategy tips

  • Open with common letters. Starters that mix frequent consonants and at least two vowels (for example, SLATE, CRANE, TRACE) surface information quickly. If you draw mostly grays from a high-frequency opener, that’s still valuable elimination.
  • Guess to gather information, not just to chase a single candidate. When the solution could be one of several minimal variants, combine distinguishing consonants into one test word to collapse the tree.
  • Move known letters around. Yellows are your friends—systematically try them in new slots rather than repeating patterns that already failed.
  • Mind duplicates, but verify. Even when a word could include a double letter, spend a mid-game guess to rule out more unique letters first—unless the board strongly points to a double.
  • Use Hard Mode if you want stricter discipline. It forces you to incorporate all revealed greens and yellows in subsequent guesses, which can reduce wasteful tests but raises the difficulty.

Timing and refresh

The puzzle refreshes daily at midnight in your local time zone. Come back tomorrow for #1554.