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Today’s Wordle is the hardest in two years and people are angry – here’s why, plus my tips to avoid defeat next time

Vaseline October 15, 2024

Every now and then there is a Wordle that is so difficult that it ends thousands of streaks in one go. The current Wordle is one of them.

According to WordleBot, the New York Times’ in-game helper tool, puzzle #1,214 has an average score of 5.7. That makes it the most difficult since October 2022 and even the third most difficult ever. Inevitably, enthusiastic Wordlers took to Twitter (or X, whatever) to share their tales of woe with the world. ‘Wordle 1,214

So why is it so hard, why are people so angry, and how could you have avoided failure today?

To answer these questions I have to reveal the solution, so don’t read past this point if you haven’t played yet, because SPOILERS FOR TODAY’S WORD, GAME #1,214, ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2024 will follow.

Third hardest ever

Okay, the solution is coming, so really, stop reading if you don’t want to know what it is.

Or, if you haven’t played yet, head over to my NYT Wordle page today for some last minute tips.

**FINAL SPOILER ALERT**

Today’s answer is CORER. Yes, KOR.

At the time of writing, WordleBot has analyzed approximately 42,000 games, of which approximately 10,000 have failed; that’s about 25%. Another 30% solved the problem only on the last guess.

That explains the super high average score of 5.7; Yes, some people solved it in three, four or five guesses (well done if you’re one of them!), but the majority took six or failed altogether.

I’ve been tracking WordleBot’s average scores every day since it launched in April 2022, which means I now have a list of 926 games organized by difficulty. By that measure, CORER is the third-hardest ever, behind only PARER (game #454, average score 6.3) and MUMMY (#491, 5.8), both in late 2022.

The common theme of today’s failures is evident from a glance at Twitter, where those familiar rows of green squares have a telltale opening from top to bottom in the middle:

Wordle 1,214 🟩 this has to be the worst Wordle ever!October 15, 2024

Wordel 1,214 x/6*⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨🟩⬜⬜🟨⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩The streak is over. That’s a dirty word.October 15, 2024

Wordle 1,214 🟩Abysmal and I hate this app and I hate this worldOctober 15, 2024

A perfect Wordle storm

This pattern indicates that the game is an over-answer variant, where the solution differs by only one letter from several other words. Today, COVER, COWER, and CODER were all more likely answers, while COPER, COMER, and COYER were also possible.

It’s a common scenario that plays out with words ending in ER, simply because there are so many of them. My analysis of every Wordle answer shows that 141 of the game’s 2,309 original solutions end in ER, making this by far the most likely ending. It is therefore easy to identify the pattern, but incredibly difficult to then determine the correct beginning of the word.

That leads to the pattern above, where people who had CO-ER kept adding the wrong middle letter.

Not only is it an over-answer word and an ER word, but CORER also contains a repeating letter, R. These make the game more difficult by default, as most people don’t enjoy playing a repeat; it feels like throwing away a letter.

Finally, there’s the fact that CORER isn’t actually an everyday word, to the extent that, judging by the reaction on Twitter, some people have never even heard of it.

Put all that together and you have all the ingredients for Wordle’s nightmare. So it’s no surprise that so many people fail.

So, what could you have done differently if you lost your streak today?

The best way to solve this kind of Wordle

I’ve played every Wordle ever and lost only once, and my streak is now over 1,000 – so I know a thing or two about avoiding defeat in this game. That’s not exactly a superpower, but it’s the closest we can get!

I scored a five today, and it should have been a four if it wasn’t a stupid mistake. But I was never in danger of losing my streak, despite a terrible opening gamble that left me with 967 possible solutions. That’s because I’ve learned what to do and what not to do on days like these.

I’ll start by pointing out that if you’re playing Wordle on hard mode, I can’t help you. Hard mode doesn’t let you leave out letters that are already green, meaning if you encountered that CO-ER pattern early on, you’ll have had no choice but to blindly guess letters in search of the right one. . There are good strategies available to avoid defeat in hard mode, but you’ll have to look elsewhere for what they are.

However, if you were playing in standard mode, I do have some advice.

First, you want to determine as early as possible whether or not you are dealing with an ER word. The obvious trick here is to make your starting word a word that contains both letters. STARE was my favorite opening game for years until I switched to random play for the sake of variety, and it’s also one of WordleBot’s favorite words. CRANE is the bot’s first choice, or you can try CRATE, TRACE, CARET, CARTE, TASER, PARSE, SNARE or many others.

Any of these will point the way to an ER answer early on, but if your starting word doesn’t contain one or both letters, you’ll need to correct that on the second guess unless you’re sure this isn’t possible (because one is already excluded, or another letter is green at the end, for example).

That’s what I did today. My random starting word was VINYL, which was useless, but I immediately followed STARE and discovered the yellow R and E.

NYT Wordle answer for game 1214 on a green background

(Image credit: New York Times)

That was enough information for me to know that it was so probably an ER word, so the next step was to confirm that while excluding as many words as possible.

The best approach at this stage is to list as many words as possible, to see which letters may be in play. Apparently there were still 68 open to me at this point (WordleBot told me after the fact), and I think I figured out about half of them. That was enough to give me a good idea of the best letters to play next.

For example, I could see that O was the most likely missing vowel to appear in BOXER, JOKER, GOFER, and MOWER, among others. P was also a common letter: POWER, POKER, DOPER, MOPER, PURER. And then there was the repeated R…

It may seem strange to play a repeated letter at this stage, but there are loads of answers that fit that pattern, including RIDER, RUDER, ROWER, ROGER CURER and indeed CORER – plus a whole bunch of non-ER words that would still pass (RECUR, ERROR, FREE).

So I put that all together and played ROPER, and it worked in the sense that it reduced my options to just one. Then I messed up by playing BORER instead of CORER, which was a shame, but ultimately ended with my streak intact.

Most importantly, above everything I’ve said before, is to never blindly guess letters looking for the missing ones.

Let’s say on the third guess you got CO-ER. It would be tempting to guess COVER next, right? Don’t do it. Instead, see what words they could be: COVER, COWER, CORER and CODER, for example. Your next guess should then be something like VOWED, as that would rule out COVER, COWER and CODER, depending on which of V, W or D turned yellow/green. And if none of them did, the answer would be CORER.

It may go against your instincts to do this, because in some ways you are wasting a gamble; you know this won’t be the answer. But scoring a five when it could have been a four is always preferable to failing completely, so don’t be a hero – play it safe and live to fight another day.

This may not be any comfort to you today if you’ve lost your streak, but on the plus side it’s very unlikely that we’ll get another word as difficult as this for a while. Success!

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Today’s Wordle is the hardest in two years and people are angry – here’s why, plus my tips to avoid defeat next time

Vaseline

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Today’s Wordle is the hardest in two years and people are angry – here’s why, plus my tips to avoid defeat next time

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