Today’s Wordle answer is so hard it almost cost me my 1,045 game streak – and it’s all the NYT’s fault
Having a very, very long Wordle string is a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, it gives me tremendous bragging rights over those mere mortals with their hundreds of stripes. On the other hand, every game becomes a test that you must win. After all, what would I be without my Wordle streak? A so-called ‘expert’ without papers, that’s what it is. I would be laughed out of town.
I’m kidding, of course, but after going 1,046 games without a loss, I’d rather not give up my streak. But today I almost had to, because game #1,244 (Thursday, November 14) almost sent me back to ground zero.
However, I’m pretty sure I won’t be the only one – because today’s Wordle answer is undoubtedly a very difficult answer. And it’s all the New York Times’ puzzle setters.
To explain why, I’ll 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 #1,244, ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2024 will follow. You have been warned.
Wordle hall of shame
Let’s start with a question: What’s the hardest Wordle ever? Is it CAULK, one of the first games that upset thousands of eager Wordlers shortly after its rapid rise to fame? Or maybe BORAX, a word that many players outside the United States had almost no knowledge of? Or JAZZY, with its repeated Z’s and the very unusual J at the beginning?
None of these actually – the hardest ever is PARER, game #454 in September 2022. That’s based on the fact that the game had an average score of 6.3, which, to put it in context, is half a guess more than its closest competitor, MUMMY (#491, 5.8).
Those average scores come from WordleBot, the in-game AI assistance tool that analyzes your Wordle after you play. Additionally, it records the average of everyone who plays, and in turn I record those averages to keep a ranking of sorts. I now have 956 in a row, which gives me a pretty good idea of which Wordles people found the most difficult.
By that standard, today’s match ranks well down the list of the most difficult ever, with an average of 4.9. High, but not ridiculous. However, that only tells half the story.
Okay, now let’s get into the details, which means revealing today’s answer. This is your last chance to play if you haven’t already.
**FINAL SPOILER ALERT**
Excuse me, what?
Today’s answer is UVULA.
No, me neither.
I actually know a little bit what it means. Or at least I knew before I played it that it was a real word, albeit a fairly obscure one with a very strange spelling. For the uninformed, it’s the soft dangling piece between your tonsils, at the back of your throat. I thought maybe it was the ridge at the top of your mouth, but at least I was in the right spot.
Others won’t be so lucky. Twitter is already on fire with people complaining that they either had no idea what it means or that it was just too unclear.
You’re kidding Wordle 1,244 6/6⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩🟨🟨🟨🟨🟩⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟩November 13, 2024
Wordle 1,244 know that ????????? #nyt #wordleNovember 13, 2024
In addition to its relative obscurity as a word, UVULA also suffers from an incredibly unusual format, with UVU at the beginning; that is not found in any other answer. Furthermore, it contains two letters Us – and as I show in my analysis of every Wordle answer, that is also a very rare occurrence, as only 10 games out of the original 2,309 solutions have this format.
All this made it a very difficult match. The average of 4.9 puts it just outside the top 20, but I think that’s misleading – people probably end up solving it by brute force, because there are no other words that have that format. With a word like PARER, on the other hand, there are many alternatives and it is therefore easy to keep guessing until you ultimately fail. Here you finally reach a point where nothing else fits!
At least that’s what happened to me. I normally solve Wordle in about 10-20 minutes, sometimes 30-40 minutes if it’s hard and I’m playing cautiously. Here I must have stared at the board and played with different letter combinations for two hours. That’s really not an exaggeration. My family thought I had gone crazy.
I almost gave up – I was completely stunned. However, I have a daily column to write, so I pressed on and ended up scoring a five. My streak was really questionable though – I could have easily wasted a few guesses on similarly obscure words were not correct.
NYT Blues
So why is this the NYT’s fault and not mine?
Well, it’s worth noting that this is – for the second day in a row – a non-canon Wordle answer. By that I mean it wasn’t among the 2,309 answers originally created by the game’s creator Josh Wardle and his partner, but was instead added by the NYT.
Yesterday’s PRIMP (see below) was one of those too, and we’ve now had 10 in total: GUANO (game #646), SNAFU (#659), BALSA (#720), KAZOO (#730), LASER (#1038), Pious (#1054), BEAUTY (#1186) and MAMA (#1208).
Do you notice anything about those words? Yes – they include some of the toughest in recent history.
I can easily calculate the average for Wordle as a whole, and right now it stands at 3,964 for the 956 games I have a score for. However, if you look at the average of the 10 games added by the NYT, you’ll see that it’s a mighty 4.35. It’s official: the NYT is making Wordle harder!
There’s a reason for that, of course: Josh Wardle has used most of the obvious answers. LASER (average: 3.3) and PIOUS (3.8) are the only two below 4.0, and are also the most common words apart from MOM. That last word, meanwhile, is an outlier because it contains three M’s, an incredibly unusual format (and therefore had an average of 5.0).
Elsewhere, KAZOO was a 5.1, PRIMP yesterday 4.5, BALSA 4.4 and SNAFU 4.3, so it certainly seems like the NYT’s editors are choosing harsher words when given the chance.
There’s nothing wrong with that really – and I love a challenge as much as anyone. UVULA is a perfectly fair word, albeit undeniably difficult to solve in Wordle. But I didn’t feel nearly as charitable as I sat staring at a seemingly impossible match, and I doubt I will if you lose your streak today.