OK, my choice to replace President Biden as the Democratic nominee is George Clooney.

Yes, I am semi-serious. No, I don’t expect anyone else to take me seriously — let alone the Oscar-winning actor.

His lifestyle, privacy and pay would suffer immensely — even if a $400,000 salary plus free housing, food and travel would sound very alluring to most people. Even with the hefty workload increase.

Why Clooney?

Most importantly, he’d whip the dangerous Donald Trump easily, probably by a landslide. Clooney’s a better actor. That’s all Trump is, besides a compulsive liar. Clooney is much more.

He has an easy smile that exudes sincerity and is extraordinarily telegenic. Trump pouts and frowns and is a horror show.

Clooney exhibits conviction and is a humanitarian. Trump displays self-centered opportunism and sows hate.

Clooney is relatively young for a presidential candidate these days. He’s an upbeat 63. Trump is a whiny, grouchy 78.

Why else?

Clooney had the guts, unlike most leading Democratic politicians, to be straight with the public, call it like he saw it and urge Biden to quit running for reelection. This was just weeks after he co-hosted a record $30-million, star-studded Hollywood fundraiser for the president.

“I love Joe Biden. … In the last four years, he’s won many of the battles he faced. But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can,” Clooney wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

He referred to the 81-year-old president’s disastrous debate performance against Trump.

The Biden he saw at the fundraiser wasn’t the Biden of four years ago, Clooney wrote, “he was the same man we all witnessed at the debate. …

“Our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw…. The [ABC] George Stephanopoulous interview only reinforced what we saw the week before. … Is it fair to point these things out? It has to be. … We are not going to win in November with this president. …

“Top Democrats … need to ask this president to voluntarily step aside. … Would it be messy? Yes. Democracy is messy. But would it enliven our party and wake up voters who, long before the June debate, had already checked out. It sure would.”

Agreed.

Biden has been a good president despite a few screwups, most notably on illegal immigration. But that doesn’t mean he’d be effective in a second term.

And Biden’s candidacy is not sustainable. Support among Democratic members of Congress is cracking.

Much more importantly, voters have been telling pollsters for months that they desire a younger Democratic standard bearer. But the party didn’t listen. Now, Biden is losing more ground to Trump and there’s even speculation about some blue states turning purple.

Patrons watch President Biden debate former President Trump at a watch party on June 27 in Scottsdale, Ariz.

(Ross D. Franklin / Associated Press)

Biden loyalists, like California Gov. Gavin Newsom, may loudly sing the president’s praises, but too many voters have lost confidence in his mental acuity. They doubt his ability to beat Trump and perform adequately in the Oval Office if he does.

Biden’s hourlong news conference Thursday night went OK.

Freed from the inane two-minute time limit on answering questions in the TV debate, Biden was able to respond with thoughtful replies. He particularly was impressive when answering a foreign policy question about dealing with China and Russia.

But he awkwardly flubbed the first question. Biden was asked whether he was concerned about Vice President Kamala Harris’ ability to beat Trump if she were the nominee.

“Look, I wouldn’t have picked Vice President Trump to be vice president did I think she was not qualified to be president. So, let’s start there,” he replied.

That could be dismissed as a minor slip of the tongue, but the president did a similar name botch an hour earlier. At a Washington ceremony, Biden accidentally introduced Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as the Russian tyrant who invaded Zelensky’s country.

“Ladies and gentlemen, President Putin,” Biden said, before quickly catching himself.

Then there was the July 4 radio interview when Biden said: “I’m proud to be … the first vice president, the first Black woman to serve with a Black president.”

He was scrambling his often-used line about being proud of serving with the first Black president and also choosing the first Black woman as vice president. It was a too-common verbal fumble that accentuates voters’ concern about the president’s decline.

Clooney’s a world-class communicator.

He’s a Kentucky native who conceivably could draw support from Southern border states. Remember that wonderful “O Brother, Where Art Thou” flick when he played a lead bluegrass singer? Sure, he was an escaped convict, but that was just pretend. Trump’s a true-life convicted felon.

Clooney piloted the swordfishing boat Andrea Gail into “The Perfect Storm” and it perished, but I’m confident he wouldn’t sink the ship of state.

Look how he cleverly and deftly upended the corrupt corporate attorney who tried to kill him in “Michael Clayton.”

And showed his environmental creds and family values in “The Descendants.”

Politicians should never underestimate the voters’ desire to be entertained.

Yes, Clooney is just a movie star who has never served in public office. But neither had actors Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger before they were elected California governor.

And Trump, a reality TV star, had never held office either before shockingly being elected president. In his case, it showed.

All right, Clooney is not going to be nominated for president. Democrats haven’t the imagination.

But they should entertain us at their August convention by engaging in a competitive, wide-open contest for the best candidate to stop Trump. And it’s not Biden.

Satellite imagery shows the path Storm Beryl took from forming in late June, to sweeping through the Caribbean, before eventually hitting parts of the United States in July.

This timelapse footage from the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) spans 16 days from June 27, to July 12, showing Beryl’s “formation as a tropical storm, through the post-tropical severe weather and flooding it brought to eastern North America”.

Remnants of Beryl prompted flood warnings for parts of New York and northern New England on July 10, before the storm tapered off. Credit: CSU/CIRA & NOAA via Storyful

If you’re looking for the Wordle answer for July 13, 2024 read on. We’ll share some clues, tips, and strategies, and finally the solution. Today’s puzzle is medium difficult; I got it in four. Beware, there are spoilers below for July 13, Wordle #1,120! Keep scrolling if you want some hints (and then the answer) to today’s Wordle game.

How to play Wordle

Wordle lives here on the New York Times website. A new puzzle goes live every day at midnight, your local time.

Start by guessing a five-letter word. The letters of the word will turn green if they’re correct, yellow if you have the right letter in the wrong place, or gray if the letter isn’t in the day’s secret word at all. For more, check out our guide to playing Wordle here, and my strategy guide here for more advanced tips. (We also have more information at the bottom of this post, after the hints and answers.)

Ready for the hints? Let’s go!

Does today’s Wordle have any unusual letters?

We’ll define common letters as those that appear in the old typesetters’ phrase ETAOIN SHRDLU. (Memorize this! Pronounce it “Edwin Shirdloo,” like a name, and pretend he’s a friend of yours.)

Almost all of today’s letters are from our mnemonic. Only one isn’t, and it’s still pretty common.

Can you give me a hint for today’s Wordle?

To establish, as in a law.

Does today’s Wordle have any double or repeated letters?

There are no repeated letters today. 

How many vowels are in today’s Wordle?

There are two vowels.

What letter does today’s Wordle start with?

Today’s word starts with E. 

What letter does today’s Wordle end with?

Today’s word ends with T. 

What is the solution to today’s Wordle?

Ready? Today’s word is ENACT.

How I solved today’s Wordle

I started with RAISE then tried BLOND and MATCH to eliminate common consonants. This left ENACT as the only possible solution.

Wordle 1,120 4/6

⬛🟨⬛⬛🟨
⬛⬛⬛🟨⬛
⬛🟨🟨🟩⬛
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

Yesterday’s Wordle answer

Yesterday’s Wordle was hard. The hint was “be there in one of these—i.e., in a hurry” and the answer contained one common letters, two somewhat common letters, and two uncommon letters.

The answer to yesterday’s Wordle was JIFFY.

A primer on Wordle basics

The idea of Wordle is to guess the day’s secret word. When you first open the Wordle game, you’ll see an empty grid of letters. It’s up to you to make the first move: type in any five-letter word. 

Now, you can use the colors that are revealed to get clues about the word: Green means you correctly guessed a letter, and it’s in the correct position. (For example, if you guess PARTY, and the word is actually PURSE, the P and R will be green.)

• Yellow means the letter is somewhere in the word, but not in the position you guessed it. (For example, if you guessed PARTY, but the word is actually ROAST, the R, A and T will all be yellow.)

• Gray means the letter is not in the solution word at all. (If you guessed PARTY and everything is gray, then the solution cannot be PURSE or ROAST.)

With all that in mind, guess another word, and then another, trying to land on the correct word before you run out of chances. You get six guesses, and then it’s game over.

The best starter words for Wordle

What should you play for that first guess? The best starters tend to contain common letters, to increase the chances of getting yellow and green squares to guide your guessing. (And if you get all grays when guessing common letters, that’s still excellent information to help you rule out possibilities.) There isn’t a single “best” starting word, but the New York Times’s Wordle analysis bot has suggested starting with one of these:

• CRANE

• TRACE

• SLANT

• CRATE

• CARTE

Meanwhile, an MIT analysis found that you’ll eliminate the most possibilities in the first round by starting with one of these:

• SALET

• REAST

• TRACE

• CRATE

• SLATE

Other good picks might be ARISE or ROUND. Words like ADIEU and AUDIO get more vowels in play, but you could argue that it’s better to start with an emphasis on consonants, using a starter like RENTS or CLAMP. Choose your strategy, and see how it plays out.

How to win at Wordle

We have a few guides to Wordle strategy, which you might like to read over if you’re a serious student of the game. This one covers how to use consonants to your advantage, while this one focuses on a strategy that uses the most common letters. In this advanced guide, we detail a three-pronged approach for fishing for hints while maximizing your chances of winning quickly.

The biggest thing that separates Wordle winners from Wordle losers is that winners use their guesses to gather information about what letters are in the word. If you know that the word must end in -OUND, don’t waste four guesses on MOUND, ROUND, SOUND, and HOUND; combine those consonants and guess MARSH. If the H lights up in yellow, you know the solution.

One more note on strategy: the original Wordle used a list of about 2,300 solution words, but after the game was bought by the NYT, the game now has an editor who hand-picks the solutions. Sometimes they are slightly tricky words that wouldn’t have made the original list, and sometimes they are topical. For example, FEAST was the solution one Thanksgiving. So keep in mind that there may be a theme.

Wordle alternatives

If you can’t get enough of five-letter guessing games and their kin, the best Wordle alternatives, ranked by difficulty, include:

• Wheeldle, which lets you play one puzzle after another

• Dordle and Quordle, which ask you to play two (Dordle) or four (Quordle) puzzles at the same time, with the same guesses. There is also Octordle, with eight puzzles, and Sedecordle, with 16.

• Waffle, which shows you several five-letter words, scrambled in a grid; you play by swapping the letters around until you solve.

• Absurdle, which changes the solution after each guess, but needs to stay consistent with its previous feedback. You have to strategically back it into a corner until there is only one possible word left; then you guess it, and win.

• Squabble, in which you play Wordle against other people with a timer running. You take damage if you spend too much time between guesses; winner is the last one standing.

• Antiwordle, in which you are trying not to guess the day’s solution. You’re required to reuse any letters that you (oops) guessed correctly, so the longer it takes you, the better you are at the game.