About Wordle #196 (December 31, 2021)
Wordle #196 was published on Friday, December 31, 2021. It's the puzzle players around the world saw on that date, locked in at midnight local time and shared the next morning through the familiar yellow-and-green grid.
The answer was UNIFY, a 5-letter word that starts with U and ends with Y.
This particular answer carries 2 vowels and 3 consonants, distributed across positions 1, 3. The word uses 5 distinct letters with no repeats. With five fully distinct letters and no repeats, the grid behaves predictably for players who commit to a strong opener.
If you're replaying this puzzle from the archive, start with a classic opener like CRANE, STARE, or ADIEU to nail the vowels in two moves. Once you know the shape, the suffix often gives the answer away. The day before this one was TROLL and the day after was REBUS, so comparing those three answers is a quick way to spot whether the editor leaned toward a particular stem or vowel pattern that week.
For more context, the Wordle archive on this site indexes every puzzle back to launch, so you can scan the surrounding week or jump straight to a specific date. The solver tool on the same site will run the same letter-frequency logic against any guess you throw at it, which makes it handy for working through a stale grid you've been sitting on.