Waffle #1756 Hints & Answers Today, November 12, 2026

Waffle (wafflegame.net) puzzle #1756, for Thursday, Nov. 12, 2026, opens with just 5 of its 21 tiles green. Four sit in the corners and one in the middle. Each word gets a short meaning below; the answers, the swap route and the proof that the route is the shortest stay in the marked last section.

Five greens is a thin start, so skim the tile counts on our Waffle page if the colors are not fresh in your mind.

Hints for the six words

Across

• Row 1: starts with O and ends with G. Still due as a debt; money you have not yet paid back.
• Row 3: starts with C and ends with E. A hidden store of supplies, or a computer’s quick-access memory.
• Row 5: starts with R and ends with N. A TV show shown a second time.

Down

• Column 1: starts with O and ends with R. To take place or happen.
• Column 3: starts with I and ends with R. To bring a cost or penalty on yourself.
• Column 5: starts with G and ends with N. To gather bit by bit, the way leftover grain is picked up after a harvest.

Five greens, all at crossings

Every green tile today sits where a row meets a column, so each one helps two words at once. Row 3 and column 3 have one green each, the center square they share. The other four words have two, in the corners.

Word	Tiles already in place
Row 1	2 of 5
Row 3	1 of 5
Row 5	2 of 5
Column 1	2 of 5
Column 3	1 of 5
Column 5	2 of 5

The counts total 10, which is the five greens counted twice. No word has a green tile that belongs to it alone, and the middle squares of rows 1 and 5 and columns 1 and 5 are all wrong.

Six repeated letters crowd the grid

Fifteen of the 21 tiles are copies: six letters appear two or three times, and the other six letters appear once.

Letter	Tiles	Start in the right square
A	2	0
R	2	1
N	3	1
E	2	0
U	3	0
C	3	1

Twelve of the 15 copies sit in a wrong square, so a yellow tile from this list could belong in two or three places. The six single letters have one home each, and two of them start there.

Mark your streak on our printable weekly calendar or the November 2026 printable calendar.

More of today’s puzzles: Wordle hints and Connections hints. Yesterday’s grid: Waffle #1755.

Waffle #1756 answers and swap route (spoilers)

Stop here if you still want to solve it yourself.

Direction	Position	Answer
Across	Row 1	Owing
Across	Row 3	Cache
Across	Row 5	Rerun
Down	Column 1	Occur
Down	Column 3	Incur
Down	Column 5	Glean

The solved grid, with a dot for each hole:

O W I N G
C . N . L
C A C H E
U . U . A
R E R U N

The starting grid

The starting grid, row by row, with dots for the holes:

O H W L G
A . R . N
E U C U C
E . N . C
R I U A N

The green tiles are O in row 1, column 1; G in row 1, column 5; C in the center; R in row 5, column 1; and N in row 5, column 5.

A 10-swap route to finish

The minimum is 10 swaps. Play them in order, because each one assumes the earlier ones are done. Swaps 3, 4, 6, 7, 9 and 10 put two tiles home at once; the other four fix one each.

Swap	Squares	Letters
1	Row 1, column 2 and row 1, column 3	H and W
2	Row 1, column 3 and row 5, column 2	H and I
3	Row 1, column 4 and row 2, column 5	L and N
4	Row 2, column 1 and row 4, column 5	A and C
5	Row 2, column 3 and row 4, column 3	R and N
6	Row 3, column 1 and row 3, column 5	E and C
7	Row 3, column 2 and row 5, column 4	U and A
8	Row 3, column 4 and row 5, column 2	U and H
9	Row 4, column 1 and row 5, column 2	E and U
10	Row 4, column 3 and row 5, column 3	R and U

Why 10 swaps is the floor

Count the tiles first: 16 of the 21 start in the wrong square. A swap that fixes two tiles needs two tiles that each sit where the other belongs. Scanning every pair on this board finds exactly four such pairs, and none shares a tile with another:

• L in row 1, column 4 and N in row 2, column 5
• A in row 2, column 1 and C in row 4, column 5
• E in row 3, column 1 and C in row 3, column 5
• U in row 3, column 2 and A in row 5, column 4

Those four swaps (3, 4, 6 and 7 above) settle 8 tiles. The other 8 tiles cannot trade in pairs, so they form longer loops: one loop of 5 tiles (swaps 1, 2, 8 and 9) and one of 3 tiles (swaps 5 and 10). A loop of n tiles costs n minus 1 swaps, which gives the rule: swaps = misplaced tiles minus number of loops. Here that is 16 minus 6 loops, or 10.

Nine would need 7 loops. With at most four two-tile loops, every other loop holds at least three tiles, and the best split of the 16 tiles tops out at 6 loops; trading a two-tile loop for longer ones never beats it. A search over all shorter routes confirms that none exists.

The tile that travels most in this route is the H, the only one of its letter. It is swapped three times (swaps 1, 2 and 8) before it lands in row 3, column 4. The R in row 2, column 3 and the U in row 3, column 4 are swapped twice each, and the other 13 tiles that move are swapped once.