The answer to Wordle #1868 for July 31, 2026 is PURSE.
Today’s puzzle rates as moderate difficulty. PURSE contains two vowels and no repeated letters, which keeps the board manageable once solvers find the right lane. The main trap is the opening P. It ranks among the least common starting letters in the Wordle word list, which means the most popular openers – CRANE, SLATE, STARE, AUDIO – leave position one completely dark. Solvers relying on those starters will have narrowed the vowels and back half of the word well before the P surfaces, which typically costs an extra guess.
Five spoiler-free hints are below before the reveal.
Wordle Hints for July 31, 2026 (#1868)
Hint 1: Two vowels – one in position two, one at the very end.
Hint 2: No repeated letters.
Hint 3: You might carry one when shopping, or hand one over at a checkout counter.
Hint 4: It can also describe what lips do when someone is concentrating hard or expressing mild disapproval.
Hint 5: The word begins with P and ends with E.
Wordle #1868 Answer: PURSE
A purse is a small bag designed to hold money, cards, and personal items – the everyday object that doubles as today’s answer. The word arrived in Middle English from Old French borse, which came from Late Latin bursa, meaning a bag or pouch, itself borrowed from Greek byrsa, the word for a hide or piece of leather. That material history makes sense: early purses were literally small leather pouches drawn shut with a cord.
The word has extended well beyond the handbag. In sports, the purse is the total prize money offered in a boxing match or horse race – when a heavyweight championship fight lists a multi-million-dollar purse, it is using the word in exactly this sense, a sum collected and distributed to the winner. To purse the lips means to press them together and push them slightly forward, the involuntary expression of concentration, disapproval, or reluctance that English picked up as a verb directly from the noun’s sense of drawing something shut.
The phrase to hold the purse strings – meaning to control the money – dates to at least the seventeenth century and remains in active use across political and business writing. Today’s answer earns its place in the puzzle through ordinariness: PURSE is a word most players know instantly but may not reach for in the early guesses where consonant coverage dominates the board.
Solving Strategy for PURSE
Openers built around common consonants (CRANE, STARE) deliver R and E, both of which appear in PURSE in positions three and five, respectively. That is a strong return from a single guess. The challenge is that R in position three and E in position five are both correct placements, which narrows the remaining field considerably but leaves P and U as the unknowns. A second guess targeting P and U – words like PLUMB, TULIP, or UPPER – should surface both letters and make the third guess straightforward.
Two days ago, the Wordle #1866 answer was VALVE, a repeated-V trap that ran harder than average. Before that, Wordle #1865 on July 28 was SONAR, a straightforward acronym-origin word that played easier. Wordle resets at midnight Eastern, and puzzle #1869 will be live on August 1, 2026.
