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Friday is here and that means all you Competitive Wordle players, playing against your friends, co-workers, rivals, enemies, or against me or the Wordle Bot, must double your points, whether positive or negative. There’s only one way you can’t double your points today, and that’s if you get none. Let’s begin!

Looking for Thursday's Wordle answer? Check out our guide right here.

Today’s Bonus Custom Wordle

Now that we can create our own custom Wordles, I’m including a bonus Wordle with each daily Wordle guide. These can be 4 to 7 letters long. Hopefully this is a fun extra challenge. Click the link below to play the Wordle I hand-crafted for you today.

Play Puzzles & Games on Forbes

Today’s Bonus Custom Wordle is 7 letters long.

The hint: Sad :(

The clue: This Wordle begins with two consonants.

Yesterday’s Custom Wordle Answer: COMEDY

Today’s Wordle Hints And Answer

• Wordle Bot’s Starting Word: SLATE
• My Starting Word Today: POUTY (810 words left)
• The Hint: Pretend
• The Clue: This Wordle has two vowels in a row.

Hints not enough, or curious to see if you did better than me on today’s Wordle? You can find the answer and read my Wordle Bot analysis and check out the current Competitive Wordle score between me, your humble Wordle guide, and the Wordle Bot below!

Today’s Wordle Answer: Friday, August 7

Today’s Wordle Bot Analysis

Every day I check Wordle Bot to help analyze my guessing game. You can check your Wordle score with Wordle Bot right here.

I’m pouting a bit over how bad my opening guess was today. POUTY left me with all grey boxes and 810 words remaining. No luck for the wicked. LIARS slashed that down to 27 and then NEIGH left me with only two. FEIGN was what I thought of first and that’s what I used. Lucky me, that was the Wordle!

Competitive Wordle Score

The most boring outcome possible for 2XP Friday: The Bot and I tied at four guesses, earning us each 0 points. Double that for 0 points. Our August totals remain:

Erik: 6 points

Wordle Bot: 3 points

How To Play Competitive Wordle

• Guessing in 1 is worth 3 points; guessing in 2 is worth 2 points; guessing in 3 is worth 1 point; guessing in 4 is worth 0 points; guessing in 5 is -1 points; guessing in 6 is -2 points and missing the Wordle is -3 points.
• If you beat your opponent you get 1 point. If you tie, you get 0 points. And if you lose to your opponent, you get -1 point. Add it up to get your score. Keep a daily running score or just play for a new score each day.
• Fridays are 2XP, meaning you double your points—positive or negative.
• You can keep a running tally or just play day-by-day. Enjoy!

Today’s Wordle Etymology

“Feign” comes from Old French feindre, from Latin fingere, meaning “to shape, form, invent, or devise.” The same Latin root also gave English words like fiction and figure. Feign came to mean inventing or pretending something that is not true.

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"'Massive attack coming … wait, never mind, they want to negotiate.' That's theater diplomacy on loop," Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's parliament speaker and top negotiator, wrote in a post on X on Thursday in an apparent jibe at Trump.

The remarks came days after Trump called off planned strikes and said the outlines of a deal had already been settled with Tehran. Iranian officials have rejected the claim, saying no talks were underway.

The conflict is meanwhile broadening across the region, with Gulf energy infrastructure and key shipping chokepoints under renewed threat.

Saudi Arabia is bracing for "multiple coordinated attacks" by Iraqi militia factions working with Iran-backed Houthis, a Saudi official told CNN. Intelligence reports from Saudi Arabia and regional governments reportedly indicated that the groups planned to strike the kingdom "in the very near future" under the guidance of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The warning came a day after the Houthis claimed responsibility for attacks on two Saudi oil tankers in the Gulf of Aden, another critical shipping chokepoint. Saudi Arabia has come under Houthi missile fire and drone attacks by Iran-backed Iraqi militias in recent weeks.

Shipping through the region's two critical chokepoints has fallen sharply in recent days. Only two vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, down from eight a day earlier, according to Kpler vessel-tracking data, against a pre-war baseline of roughly 130 to 140 daily transits. Traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb collapsed to a single dry bulk carrier, from 20 vessels the previous day.

Flows via Hormuz are unlikely to return to pre-war levels anytime soon, even after a deal is reached between Oman and Iran for managing traffic via the critical waterway.

U.S. and Israeli ships would be barred from the Strait of Hormuz under a draft plan involving Iran and Oman for managing the waterway, Tehran's semi-official Fars news agency reported Thursday, with restrictions extending to countries that have "caused damage" to Iran, until compensation is paid.

Iran also plans to issue penalties of up to 20% of the value of the cargo of those who violate the terms of the agreement, which is currently under review, according to Fars.

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Oil jumped on signs of Tehran's hardening stance on the Hormuz traffic. Brent crude futures for October delivery gained 1.3% to $83.55 a barrel, while September futures for WTI crude rose about 1.1% to $78.17 on Friday, extending losses from a day earlier and reversing an earlier slide driven by brief optimism that a Hormuz deal was days away.

Earlier, regional officials said that Iran and Oman were close to finalizing a framework covering all inbound traffic via Iranian territorial waters as well as outbound traffic through a route closer to Oman, though the arrangement would not automatically reopen the waterway.

In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump pushed back on reports that U.S. munitions stocks have been depleted by the war. "The U.S. has massive amounts of 'munitions,' especially of certain types," he said, vowing to pursue "long-term jail sentences" for leakers.

CNN reported later in the day that, in the Oval Office, Trump acknowledged that certain munitions are in "tighter" supply, while insisting less-advanced weapons remain in virtually unlimited supply. %!s()

The aptly titled episode, “Spoiler: Bert Is Magic,” kicks off with Bert (Brian Posehn) tied at the stake and about to be burned alive. Then he begs for it to rain — and it does. That’s the first sign that in this universe, Bert really is a wizard with magical powers. He can turn regular Coke into Diet Coke at the flick of a wrist, and hocus pocus up a cute puppy.

Back in the comic book store (in this case, it’s called “The Wizard’s Sleeve” and more like a store filled with powerful, spellbinding books), Stuart (Kevin Sussman) tries to explain to the Denise (Lauren Lapkus) from last week’s universe what is exactly going on with the machine that’s transporting them across the multiverse.

Kripke (John Ross Bowie), who had seen Bert on the stake, makes his way back to the store. “Stuart, we have to leave here. The people in this world think science is evil.” Cracks Stuart: “How’s that different from our world?”

Because this universe doesn’t obey the laws of physics, Kripke realizes they need magic to make the teleportation machine work. They ask Alexa where they can find someone to help — and up pops a little demon named, of course, “Alexa” (played by Louis Mustillo). Alexa points them to Bernadette Rostenkowski, “master sorceress.”

At first, it seems like normal Bernadette from “The Big Bang Theory.” She says she’s out of business, because the “Wizards Guild of America claimed I used my powers while we were on strike.” She tells them about a reversal spell that could get her powers back — but she needs the “blood of an innocent.” Having had just one girlfriend, Stuart works.

Bert is back at the store, and turns Kripke into a penguin as revenge for leaving him at the stake. But then they’re interrupted by Wil Wheaton, who’s a wizard in this universe. He shows up to warn Stuart not to trust Bernadette. (Wheaton, of course, was frequently seen on “The Big Bang Theory” playing himself.) Turns out Bernadette is actually a demon. Bert and Wil get into a sorcery battle — and Bert wins. At the same time, Bernadette makes her potion and turns into a 60-foot monster, destroying Pasadena. She wants to rule the universe and take the machine — but Bert, with his powers, manages to get the four of them out just in time.

“I remember a while ago getting a call from Chuck [Lorre] and he shared what the premise was, and I remember him saying that ‘you would be Bernadette, but not really, just a different version of Bernadette. So it’d be extremely different from anything you ever played.’ ” Rauch tells Variety. “And then he told me the cast, and I was just absolutely ecstatic. Because I love Kevin and Lauren and Brian and John so much, both as human beings and also just fans of theirs as actors. I think each of them is just a comedic laser in their own right.”

In reprising Bernadette with a twist, Rauch says, “it was just so wonderful to not only be able to step back into Bernadette’s sensible loafers and her glasses, but then to be able to have this new layer to Bernadette. It sort of made some sense in this alternate universe. There’s always been this edge to Bernadette. So the fact that they then cranked that up a million notches, and now she’s also a demon, just tickled me.

“I just thought it was so fun to play,” she adds. “And my gosh, the fact that I get to play 80 feet tall when I’ve barely reached five feet in real life, is very thrilling. I’ve never done that sort of motion capture before. Just the scale of everything that they did there is truly extraordinary. They built an entire miniature city of Pasadena that I was able to walk through and crush and pick up little versions of people and yell at them. It was a blast.”

Rauch says she wore a motion capture suit for the scene and “got a real high from it. Now I feel like I just want to walk around and crush things. I felt very powerful!” %!s()