Monday’s New York Times Wordle arrives on the first day of June with a five-letter word that sits comfortably on kitchen shelves worldwide yet managed to slow down thousands of daily players before they cracked the grid. Puzzle #1808 is live now, and if you are searching for the verified Wordle answer today, a calibrated set of hints before the spoiler, or a complete tactical breakdown of this morning’s grid, this is your definitive guide.
Before scrolling further, a fair warning: the confirmed answer for Wordle #1808 appears near the bottom of this article. Stop here if you still want to solve it independently. Everything above the answer line is spoiler-free.
Wordle Hint Today: June 1, 2026 (Puzzle #1808)
Monday’s puzzle sits in the moderate range of the difficulty curve. The word is familiar, the letters are common, and yet the construction creates a genuine bottleneck for solvers who rely heavily on vowel-forward opening strategies. Here are four calibrated hints designed to guide without giving the answer away.
- Hint 1: The word begins with the letter C.
- Hint 2: The word ends with the letter I.
- Hint 3: There are two vowels in today’s word.
- Hint 4: It refers to a small, hot-tasting pepper used fresh or dried to add spice and heat to food, or to the powdered spice made from this plant.
The letter pattern, for those who prefer a visual scaffold without a full reveal, looks like this: C _ _ _ I
Why Today’s Wordle Is Trickier Than It Looks
Puzzle #1808 benefits from a particularly devious quality: the word is so familiar that solvers often skip past it. The five-letter window is densely populated with words beginning in C, and the ending in I is unusual enough in English five-letter constructions that many players never commit to it inside their first three rows. This is the structural trap the New York Times has deployed here.
Opening words like CRANE, STARE, or SLATE will typically surface one or two correct letters in the first row, but the I at the end acts as a genuine late-game ambush. Players who locked onto food-related vocabulary early reported solving it in three to four attempts. Those who committed too aggressively to more common endings found themselves burning guesses on words that shared letters but diverged structurally.
The puzzle continues a broader editorial pattern that has defined the NYT Wordle across recent weeks. As noted in the May 29 puzzle, which revealed CLANG as its solution, the game has leaned increasingly into words that weaponize structural familiarity rather than lexical obscurity. The challenge lies not in knowing unusual vocabulary but in avoiding the cognitive traps that common letter combinations create.
This approach aligns with lessons from last Wednesday’s puzzle, which hid its difficulty inside a single vowel and a doubled consonant. That puzzle, STUFF, rewarded players who committed early to consonant-heavy frameworks rather than vowel-searching strategies.
Recent Wordle Answers and What They Reveal
The first week of June opens a new chapter in a stretch of puzzles that has tested structural reasoning as much as vocabulary. Here is a look at how the recent sequence has built toward today’s solution.
- May 31, 2026 (#1807): ETUDE
- May 30, 2026 (#1806): SMILE
- May 29, 2026 (#1805): CLANG
- May 28, 2026 (#1804): DIVOT
- May 27, 2026 (#1803): STUFF
The sequence reflects a deliberate editorial hand. ETUDE, yesterday’s musical composition, leaned on vocabulary depth. CLANG weaponized consonant clustering. STUFF embedded its difficulty in a doubled final consonant. Monday’s puzzle, by contrast, hides its solution in plain sight inside an ending that most five-letter solvers rarely test. The I conclusion is a structural outlier, and the New York Times used it precisely because of that.
For a deeper look at how this pattern has developed over the past month, the May 20 breakdown of WRECK remains one of the clearest examples of how a single-vowel construction can derail experienced players who have not adjusted their opening strategy.
Wordle Difficulty Rating: June 1, 2026
Puzzle #1808 rates as moderate on the overall difficulty scale. The word is common, the letter pool is not extreme, and the two-vowel construction offers reasonable early feedback for players using balanced openers. The primary difficulty vector is the ending. An I conclusion narrows the field in theory but opens a surprisingly wide cluster of five-letter words in practice, many of which share the same consonant spine as today’s answer.
Players using CRANE or STARE as their opener can expect to confirm the C and at least one interior letter within the first row, giving a clean path to the solution within four attempts. Players relying on vowel-heavy openers like AUDIO or OUIJA will find the feedback misleading and may require five or six guesses before the grid resolves.
Spoiler Warning: The Wordle Answer for June 1, 2026 Appears Below
This is the final spoiler notice. The confirmed answer for Wordle puzzle #1808 follows immediately. Stop scrolling now if you have not yet completed today’s grid and prefer to solve it without assistance.
Wordle Answer Today, June 1, 2026: Puzzle #1808
The confirmed Wordle answer for Monday, June 1, 2026, is:
CHILI
CHILI is a noun referring to a small, hot-tasting pepper used fresh or dried to add spice and heat to food. It can also describe the powdered spice made from the plant, or, in broader culinary usage, the slow-cooked stew of meat, beans, and spiced sauce that has become a fixture of American cuisine. The word derives from the Nahuatl chilli, the Aztec language from which Spanish borrowed it and through which it entered English. Its variant spellings, CHILE and CHILLI, reflect its journey across linguistic borders, but the five-letter CHILI is the standard American English form and the version the New York Times selected for today’s grid.
The word carries two vowels, I in the third position and I at the end, a doubled letter that many solvers did not anticipate. The H in the second position is a moderately common Wordle letter but rarely tested in conjunction with an initial C by the most popular opening words. Players who committed to CHAIR as their opener found themselves significantly advantaged, confirming the C and the H in a single row.
How Did You Do Today?
Whether you cracked it in two rows or needed all six, the Wordle game delivers its daily satisfaction regardless of how many attempts it takes. The streak is its own reward, and the puzzle will reset again at midnight tonight with a fresh five-letter challenge. If Monday’s kitchen-coded answer caught you off guard, it may be worth revisiting last Monday’s puzzle breakdown for a comparative look at how the game’s editorial team structures its weekly difficulty curve.
For additional context on how the New York Times has built its puzzle identity since acquiring the game, the full history of Wordle’s creation and acquisition remains a useful reference for anyone curious about how a private passion project became one of the defining digital rituals of the decade.
Tomorrow’s puzzle will be live at midnight. Good luck.
