Wordle players closing out the week with Friday's puzzle got a word that works both ways, one that greets and bids farewell in equal measure, drawing directly from Hawaiian culture and offering a welcome change of pace from more clinical five-letter answers.

The New York Times' daily word game, which has become a fixture in millions of players' morning routines since its 2022 acquisition by the Times, challenges solvers to guess a five-letter word in six tries or fewer, using color-coded feedback to narrow down the correct answer with each attempt.

The answer for July 25

The solution to Wordle #1862 is ALOHA, a word deeply associated with Hawaiian culture that functions as both a greeting and a farewell, commonly used to convey warmth, love, peace and goodwill. The word is frequently heard when welcoming visitors to the islands, but carries the same meaning when saying goodbye, a duality that sets it apart from most everyday English words.

Structurally, the puzzle offered a distinctive challenge: the word contains three vowels and only two consonants, along with four unique letters and one duplicated letter, the letter "A," which appears at both the beginning and end of the word. That heavy vowel concentration made ALOHA a notably different kind of solve compared with more consonant-heavy recent puzzles, rewarding players who leaned into vowel-rich opening guesses.

A puzzle built around connection

Puzzle commentators described Friday's word as........

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