Waffle Answer and Hints Today, #1742 for Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026: Clues for Six Words

Today’s Waffle (wafflegame.net) is puzzle #1742, for Thursday, Oct. 29, 2026, and it hides six five-letter words in one waffle-shaped grid. Three words read across and three read down, and every word is an ordinary English word. Use the clues below one word at a time; the answers, and a swap-by-swap route to the five-star score, are in a marked spoiler section at the end.

How Waffle works

The board is a five-by-five grid with four holes, so 21 letters are in play. Three words run across (rows 1, 3 and 5) and three run down (columns 1, 3 and 5). You swap any two letters, and you have 15 swaps to finish. Per the game’s own rules page:

Tile color	What it means
Green	The letter is in the right place.
Yellow	The letter is in that row or column, but in a different spot.
Gray	The letter is not in that row or column.

A letter on a corner can be yellow because of either of the two words that meet there. You earn a star for every swap left once the Waffle is solved, and the game says every Waffle can be solved in a minimum of 10 swaps.

Clues for each word

Across

• Row 1: starts with Q and ends with A. A noun for a proportional share assigned to each member of a group.
• Row 3: starts with A and ends with N. An adjective meaning pale, drained of color.
• Row 5: starts with M and ends with Y, and has a double letter in the middle. An adjective meaning jolly or happy.

Down

• Column 1: starts with Q and ends with M, and shares its first letter with the row 1 word. A noun for a feeling of doubt or a pang of conscience.
• Column 3: starts with O and ends with R. An adjective for something that is not the one previously referred to.
• Column 5: starts with A and ends with Y, and shares its first letter with the row 1 word and its last letter with the row 5 word. A verb meaning to irritate or bother.

A solving tip for today

Start with the corners, because each one serves two words. In today’s starting grid all four corners are already in the right place, so leave them alone and work inward. The solution has three E’s, and the starting grid has them scattered, so check which line each E belongs to before you swap it. Once a row or column is fully green, move on; a swap that turns two tiles green is worth more than one that turns one. Count your swaps as you go: with 15 available and 10 as the minimum, you can afford five detours before stars are at risk.

Keep a streak log on our printable weekly calendar or the October 2026 printable calendar.

More of today’s puzzles: Wordle hints, Connections hints and Blossom hints.

Today’s Waffle answers (spoilers)

Stop here if you still want to solve it yourself.

Direction	Position	Answer
Across	Row 1	Quota
Across	Row 3	Ashen
Across	Row 5	Merry
Down	Column 1	Qualm
Down	Column 3	Other
Down	Column 5	Annoy

The solved grid, with a dot for each hole:

Q U O T A
U . T . N
A S H E N
L . E . O
M E R R Y

The 10-swap route to five stars

The starting grid reads like this (letters row by row, dots are holes):

Q T R U A
S . E . E
E U H R O
N . A . T
M L O N Y

Five letters start in the right place (Q, A, H, M and Y), and the other 16 need to move. One route of 10 swaps, each given as row and column of the two squares, matches the game’s stated minimum:

Swap	Squares swapped	Letters
1	Row 1, column 2 and row 1, column 4	T and U
2	Row 1, column 3 and row 5, column 3	R and O
3	Row 2, column 1 and row 3, column 2	S and U
4	Row 2, column 3 and row 4, column 5	E and T
5	Row 2, column 5 and row 4, column 1	E and N
6	Row 3, column 1 and row 4, column 3	E and A
7	Row 3, column 4 and row 4, column 5	R and E
8	Row 3, column 5 and row 5, column 4	O and N
9	Row 4, column 1 and row 5, column 2	E and L
10	Row 4, column 5 and row 5, column 4	R and O

We applied these ten swaps in order to the starting grid and got the solved grid above. The answers come from the puzzle file the game serves, and a new Waffle arrives each day.