The Hardest Wordle Words Ever — Ranked by Real Data
Every word on this list cost thousands of players their streak. We pulled average guess data, failure rates, and solver traffic spikes to find the words that broke Wordle the hardest. Here is what the numbers say.
Some Wordle puzzles you finish in two guesses and close the browser feeling sharp. Others have you staring at the sixth row knowing the streak is gone and the word you just typed is almost certainly wrong. Those are not random bad days. Certain words are objectively harder, and the data shows it clearly.
I have been playing Wordle every day since puzzle 196 and tracking difficulty data across the full history of the game. This list pulls from three sources: NYT WordleBot average guess counts, solver traffic spikes from The Word Finder’s four year data set, and failure rate figures from Preply’s Google search analysis. Where sources agree on a word, it is on this list. Where only one source flags a word, that gets noted.
The full archive of every past answer including difficulty ratings for each puzzle is on the past Wordle answers page if you want to cross-reference any of these against the historical record.
How We Ranked the Hardest Wordle Words
Ranking Wordle difficulty is messier than it sounds because no single official source covers the full history of the game. Three data sets each capture something different, and combining them gives a more complete picture than any one alone.
NYT WordleBot Average Guess Data
WordleBot is the New York Times’ official puzzle analysis tool. It tracks how many guesses players use across a large sample every day and publishes an average. A score of 3.0 to 3.5 is a normal day. Anything above 4.5 starts indicating a genuinely hard puzzle. The six puzzles that averaged 6.0 in the data available to us are the hardest by this measure, because 6.0 means the average player used every guess available. WordleBot data goes back to 2022 and is the most reliable figure for puzzles from the NYT era.
Solver Traffic Spike Methodology
The Word Finder runs a popular Wordle solver and tracked daily visits to it from August 2022 to October 2026. When a puzzle is hard, players who get stuck midway open a solver to find what words still fit their green and yellow tiles. A spike in that traffic above the 28-day rolling baseline is a reliable signal that a puzzle was harder than usual. Their biggest spike on record was 98.9% above normal, on a single day in July 2026. That word is at the top of this list. The methodology has one clean advantage over average guess counts: it captures how many people got stuck, not just how many guesses they used.
Google Search Spike Analysis
Preply analyzed Google search interest for the phrase “Wordle hint” across every puzzle from January to November 2025. Puzzles that produced the largest spikes in that search term represent days when a large number of players went looking for outside help. This is a useful signal for recent puzzles where WordleBot data is limited or unavailable to third parties.
Why Average Guesses Is the Most Reliable Metric
Solver traffic and search spikes both capture stress and frustration well, but they reflect who looked for help, not how the full player population performed. Average guess count from WordleBot covers everyone who played, including those who solved it without help. For the purposes of this list, WordleBot average is the primary ranking signal where available. Solver traffic and search data fill in the gaps for older puzzles and provide a cross-check for words where WordleBot figures are disputed or unavailable.
The 15 Hardest Wordle Words of All Time
Every word on this list has a documented data point behind it. The rank reflects a combination of average guesses, failure rate, and solver traffic where available. Words with a 6.0 average are treated as tied at the top because 6.0 means the average player hit the ceiling.
| Rank | Word | Puzzle | Date | Avg Guesses | Key Difficulty Factor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PSHAW | #1852 | Jul 15, 2026 | 4.7 (solver traffic doubled) | PS opening never tested by any standard opener |
| 2 | EAGER | #1426 | May 15, 2025 | 6.0 (51% failed) | Double E, multiple lookalikes: LAGER, WAGER, PAGER |
| 3 | JIFFY | #1119 | Jul 12, 2024 | 6.0 | J start, double F, Y as second vowel |
| 3 | JAZZY | #712 | Jun 1, 2023 | 6.0 | J start, double Z, rare letter cluster |
| 3 | MOMMY | #1208 | Oct 9, 2024 | 6.0 | Double M, Y ending, word rarely typed |
| 6 | MYRRH | #1644 | Dec 19, 2025 | 5.8 est. | No standard vowel, double R, RH ending |
| 7 | UVULA | #1244 | Nov 14, 2024 | 5.7 est. | Double U, rare V, anatomy word nobody types |
| 8 | ROWER | #1310 | Jan 19, 2025 | 5.7 | Double vowel rhyme trap: MOWER, LOWER, TOWER, BOWER |
| 9 | JUMPY | #1482 | Jul 10, 2025 | 5.6 | J start, Y ending, rhyme trap |
| 10 | EERIE | #1773 | Apr 27, 2026 | 5.5 est. | Triple E, only two unique vowel positions |
| 11 | GUANO | #646 | Mar 27, 2023 | 5.3 est. | Familiar word nobody types, hides behind PLANT and GIANT |
| 12 | WOUND | #1576 | Oct 12, 2025 | 5.3 | Rhyme trap: BOUND, ROUND, SOUND, FOUND, MOUND |
| 13 | INBOX | Apr 19, 2025 | 2025 | 5.2 est. | Most Googled 2025 puzzle, compound word feel |
| 14 | KRILL | #1385 | Apr 4, 2025 | 5.2 | Rhyme trap: GRILL, DRILL, FRILL, TRILL, BRILL |
| 15 | CORER | Oct 2024 | 2024 | est. fail 43% | Double R, uncommon word, multiple ER-ending lookalikes |
Sources: NYT WordleBot (average guess figures marked with no footnote), The Word Finder solver traffic data, Preply Google search analysis, Tom’s Guide Wordle roundups. Est. indicates figures derived from published failure rates and solver traffic rather than direct WordleBot data.
Why PSHAW ranks above words with a higher average guess count: PSHAW’s solver traffic doubled on July 15, 2026, the largest single-day spike in four years of data. The 4.7 average guesses figure actually understates the difficulty because it only covers players who solved it. An estimated 15 to 20 percent of players did not solve PSHAW at all, which pulls the average down by excluding their worst-case scores. When you factor in both the average and the failure rate, PSHAW sits clearly at the top.
What Makes a Wordle Word Hard — 5 Factors
After tracking these puzzles for years, the difficulty almost always comes down to one of five things. Sometimes a word has two of them at once, which is when the real carnage happens.
This is the single biggest difficulty factor across the hardest words. EAGER has two E’s. EERIE has three. JAZZY has two Z’s. MOMMY has two M’s. JIFFY has two F’s. Most players open with five unique letters and spend the first two guesses assuming the same applies to the answer. When a word repeats a letter, that assumption burns a guess or two before the player recalibrates. About 31 percent of all Wordle answers have a repeated letter, which means roughly one in three puzzles has this trap in it. The words that combine a repeated letter with an already-rare letter, like JAZZY with double Z or JIFFY with double F, are the ones that produce 6.0 averages.
Standard opening words are built around the most common letters in the Wordle answer pool: E, A, R, T, O, I, N. Letters like J, Z, X, Q and V appear in a combined total of under 5 percent of all answers. Players who use CRANE, SLATE or TRACE as their opener never test any of these in the first guess. JAZZY, JIFFY, GIZMO, and JUMPY all start with or contain rare letters. By the time a player confirms the vowels and common consonants, they have used three or four guesses without making any progress on the unusual letter that anchors the word. If you want to understand which letters are worth testing early, the best Wordle starting words page covers the full frequency data.
This is the most underrated difficulty factor in Wordle and the one that gets the least coverage. A rhyme trap happens when multiple valid five letter words share the same three or four letter ending. Once you confirm the ending, you have to guess through the options one at a time. In standard mode that costs guesses. In hard mode, where every guess must include confirmed letters, it can end a streak entirely. KRILL is one of the clearest examples. Once players confirmed the RILL ending, GRILL, DRILL, FRILL, TRILL, and BRILL all remained possible. That is five guesses just to clear the rhyme cluster before getting to KRILL. WOUND produced the same trap: BOUND, ROUND, SOUND, FOUND, and MOUND all share the same ending. EAGER produced LAGER, WAGER, PAGER, and RAGER. ROWER produced MOWER, LOWER, TOWER, BOWER, and POWER. Any word sitting at the end of a large rhyme family is automatically harder than its letters alone suggest.
Only eight of the roughly 2,300 words in the Wordle answer pool have no A, E, I, O or U. MYRRH is one of them. NYMPH is another. DRYLY and TRYST use Y as the only vowel-like sound. The problem is that every standard Wordle strategy starts by testing vowels. A player who opens with CRANE gets nothing useful against MYRRH. SLATE, STARE, ADIEU, all grey. Three guesses in, they have confirmed nothing. The word has no hook for any standard opener to catch. When players hit a vowelless puzzle without expecting it, the board reads like the answer cannot possibly exist.
Some words are hard not because of their letters but because they never appear in anyone’s active written vocabulary. PSHAW is a perfect example. Every English speaker has seen the word. Almost nobody has ever typed it. It is an interjection, an old-fashioned noise of dismissal, the kind of word that exists in literature and nowhere else. GUANO is the same. Players know it means bat droppings. They have encountered it in nature documentaries. But when they sit at the Wordle board trying to think of five letter words that fit their confirmed letters, GUANO simply does not surface. GAMUT is another one: most people only ever use it in the phrase “run the gamut” and have never typed the word standalone. These words sit in passive vocabulary but not active recall, which is exactly the gap Wordle exploits.
Hardest Wordle by Year
The difficulty distribution has stayed roughly consistent since 2022, but each year has produced at least one word that caused significant damage to streaks. Here are the standouts.
Hardest Wordle of 2022
2022 happened before our full data set begins, but community consensus and dictionary lookup spikes point to CAULK as the most damaging puzzle of that year. The word has a silent L, which means players who identified C, A, U and K could not construct the answer because the phonetics do not match the spelling. NYMPH also destroyed streaks that year for the opposite reason: no standard vowels. These two puzzles from late 2022 are frequently cited in long-term player surveys as streak-enders.
Hardest Wordle of 2023
JAZZY on June 1, 2023, averaged 6.0 guesses. Two Z’s and a J in one word. Standard openers test none of those three letters. A player using CRANE and STOIL as their first two guesses has zero information about J, Z or Z going into guess three. They then have to deduce a word built almost entirely from untested letters with two guesses remaining. GUANO on March 27 also spiked hard that year, 84.1% above normal solver traffic. But JAZZY’s 6.0 average gives it the top spot for 2023.
Hardest Wordle of 2024
EAGER on May 15, 2024, produced the highest documented failure rate of any Wordle puzzle on record. 51 percent of players across a sample of 1.78 million games failed to solve it in six tries. The average was 6.0. The trap was twofold: double E in a word that does not look like it would have repeated letters, combined with a large rhyme family. LAGER, WAGER, PAGER, RAGER all share the AGER ending. JIFFY and MOMMY both also averaged 6.0 in 2024, but EAGER’s 51 percent failure rate puts it above them. CORER also had an estimated 43 percent failure rate that October.
Hardest Wordle of 2025
INBOX on April 19, 2025, was the most Googled puzzle of the year according to Preply’s analysis. ROWER averaged 5.7 guesses in January. JUMPY hit 5.6 in July. KRILL had a 20 percent failure rate in April. But INBOX wins 2025 because of the search volume spike. Players who saw I, N, B, O, X on the board had most of those letters confirmed through normal openers but could not produce the word because INBOX reads like a two-word compound and not a standard five letter word to most people. Tom’s Guide staff and player communities both flagged it as one of the more frustrating solves in recent memory.
Hardest Wordle of 2026 So Far
Nothing in 2026 has come close to PSHAW. July 15 produced a 98.9 percent spike in solver traffic, nearly doubling a normal day. WordleBot put the average at 4.7 guesses, but that figure is misleading because it excludes the significant percentage of players who failed entirely. The NYT’s own testers averaged six guesses out of six on this puzzle. EERIE in April (three E’s) and OOMPH in January (double O, MPH ending) both produced qualifying spikes. ASPIC in August and GEODE two days before it both ran above 40 percent above normal. But PSHAW is in a category of its own for 2026.
The Rhyme Trap — The Most Underrated Difficulty Factor
Most Wordle coverage focuses on rare letters and double letters as difficulty factors. The rhyme trap gets far less attention, but in practice it costs more streaks than either of those because it can appear in words that look completely ordinary on the surface.
A rhyme trap is what happens when you confirm the last three or four letters of a word and discover that six or more common English words share that exact ending. From that point, every guess is a coin flip unless you have enough confirmed information to rule out the wrong candidates directly.
The Most Dangerous Rhyme Families in Wordle
The ILL Family — 6 Valid Answers
GRILL, DRILL, FRILL, TRILL, KRILL, SWILL, SPILL, SKILL, BRILL. Once R, I, L, L are confirmed, the first letter is the only variable. In hard mode you must guess each one. In standard mode a diagnostic guess testing G, D, F, T and K simultaneously is the only way out without burning five guesses.
The OUND Family — 5 Valid Answers
WOUND, BOUND, ROUND, SOUND, FOUND, MOUND, HOUND, POUND. WOUND was the answer on October 12, 2025 and produced a 25 percent failure rate. The O, U, N, D ending is extremely common in English, which means confirming those four letters still leaves the board wide open.
The ATCH Family — 5 Valid Answers
CATCH, MATCH, PATCH, BATCH, LATCH, HATCH, WATCH, THATCH (too long). This family appears frequently in Wordle coverage as a streak killer. In practice the solver traffic data shows it produces less damage than expected because many players recognise the pattern early and use a diagnostic guess to clear several options at once.
The ASTE Family — 5 Valid Answers
WASTE, HASTE, PASTE, TASTE, BASTE. Five words sharing the same four letters. A player who confirms A, S, T, E has essentially confirmed nothing useful about the first letter. This family has produced several difficult puzzles and remains a reliable trap.
How to Escape a Rhyme Trap
The moment you confirm an ending that belongs to a large rhyme family, stop guessing from that family and use one guess to test the first letters of all the candidates at once. If GRILL, DRILL, FRILL, TRILL and KRILL are all still possible, a word containing G, D, F, T and K in a single guess eliminates four out of five options in one move. You lose that guess as a direct attempt but you gain four guesses worth of information. In standard mode this is always the right call when you have four or more rhyme candidates remaining. The Wordle solver shows you exactly which words still fit your tiles, which makes identifying rhyme trap candidates fast.
Hard mode makes rhyme traps much more dangerous. In hard mode every guess must use all confirmed letters. That means you cannot make a diagnostic guess to clear rhyme candidates. You have to guess from the family one by one. If you reach guess four with five valid rhyme candidates remaining, you are guessing blind and the streak is in real danger. Hard mode players need to identify rhyme traps even earlier and use earlier guesses to test the variable first letter before locking in too much of the ending.
How to Survive Hard Wordle Words
These patterns come from playing every day and watching where the extra guesses come from. Each one applies directly to the words on this list.
Check for Repeated Letters Before Guess Three
About 31 percent of Wordle answers repeat a letter. That is nearly one in three puzzles. EAGER, EERIE, JAZZY, JIFFY, MOMMY, CORER, ROWER and KRILL all have repeated letters. The default assumption of five unique letters is wrong for a third of all puzzles. Before your third guess, ask whether one of the confirmed yellow or green letters could appear more than once. This takes about five seconds and saves the guess you would otherwise spend on a word that looks right but is missing a double. The Wordle tips page covers this and six other patterns with specific examples from past puzzles.
Test Y as a Vowel When A E I O U All Fail
MYRRH, NYMPH, DRYLY, TRYST, GLYPH and CRYPT all use Y as the only vowel-like sound. If your first two guesses returned all grey vowels, the answer almost certainly uses Y as its vowel, or has no traditional vowel at all. Shift to a guess that tests Y in multiple positions rather than continuing to burn guesses on vowel-heavy words that have already been eliminated. This is the single most important adjustment for the one word in every thirty or so that has no standard vowel.
Use a Diagnostic Guess When a Rhyme Trap Kicks In
Covered above in the rhyme trap section, but worth repeating as a survival rule: the moment you have three or more rhyme candidates remaining and two or fewer guesses left, stop guessing from the family. Use one guess to test the variable letters. You lose the guessing value of that move but you gain the elimination value of several moves at once. The math almost always favours the diagnostic guess over four or five consecutive rhyme family guesses.
When to Open the Wordle Solver
There is no shame in using a solver when you have two guesses left and four possible words. The solver is a tool, not a cheat. Opening it when you genuinely cannot narrow down the candidates is smarter than guessing randomly and losing the streak to bad luck rather than bad reasoning. The Wordle solver shows every word that fits your current green, yellow and grey tiles, which lets you see the full rhyme family and make an informed decision about your next guess rather than picking one at random.
Hardest Wordle Words — Complete Reference Table
All 30 hardest words from The Word Finder’s four year data set, combined with WordleBot figures and failure rate data where available. Sorted by difficulty rank.
| Rank | Word | Puzzle | Date | Difficulty Signal | Primary Factor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PSHAW | #1852 | Jul 15, 2026 | Solver traffic +98.9% | PS opening, word never typed |
| 2 | EAGER | #1426 | May 15, 2025 | 6.0 avg, 51% failed | Double E, rhyme trap |
| 3 | JIFFY | #1119 | Jul 12, 2024 | 6.0 avg | J, double F, Y vowel |
| 3 | JAZZY | #712 | Jun 1, 2023 | 6.0 avg | J, double Z |
| 3 | MOMMY | #1208 | Oct 9, 2024 | 6.0 avg | Double M, word never typed |
| 6 | GUANO | #646 | Mar 27, 2023 | Solver traffic +84.1% | Word never typed |
| 7 | UVULA | #1244 | Nov 14, 2024 | Solver traffic +79.9% | Double U, rare V |
| 8 | MYRRH | #1644 | Dec 19, 2025 | Solver traffic +63.8% | No standard vowel, double R |
| 9 | GIZMO | #1606 | Nov 11, 2025 | Solver traffic +61.2% | Z in middle, word never typed |
| 10 | AFFIX | #1286 | Dec 26, 2024 | Solver traffic +59.9% | Double F, rare X |
| 11 | ZEBRA | #1106 | Jun 29, 2024 | Solver traffic +59.3% | Z start, everyone knows it, nobody opens with Z |
| 12 | KAZOO | #730 | Jun 19, 2023 | Solver traffic +58.8% | K, Z, double O |
| 13 | EERIE | #1773 | Apr 27, 2026 | Solver traffic +55.4% | Triple E |
| 14 | CACTI | #1627 | Dec 2, 2025 | Solver traffic +50.3% | Irregular plural, double C |
| 15 | GAMUT | #1213 | Oct 14, 2024 | Solver traffic +49.2%, 5.2 avg | Word only used in one phrase |
| 15 | OOMPH | #1662 | Jan 6, 2026 | Solver traffic +49.2% | Double O, MPH cluster |
| 17 | OZONE | #1404 | Apr 23, 2025 | Solver traffic +47.7% | Double O, Z in middle |
| 17 | ENNUI | #716 | Jun 5, 2023 | Solver traffic +47.7% | Double N, French origin |
| 19 | UMBRA | #1784 | May 8, 2026 | Solver traffic +47.6% | Astronomy term, word never typed |
| 20 | MAIZE | #585 | Jan 25, 2023 | Solver traffic +46.1% | Z in middle, British English |
| 21 | ASPIC | #1884 | Aug 16, 2026 | Solver traffic +44.6% | Food word almost nobody eats |
| 22 | EMOJI | #1826 | Jun 19, 2026 | Solver traffic +44.1% | Modern word, J in middle |
| 23 | GEODE | #1882 | Aug 14, 2026 | Solver traffic +43.6% | Geology term, double vowel ending |
| 24 | MOMMY | #1208 | Oct 9, 2024 | 6.0 avg | Double M, Y ending |
| 25 | RUMBA | #1335 | Feb 13, 2025 | Solver traffic +41.8% | Dance word, MB cluster |
| 26 | ANNEX | #1529 | Aug 26, 2025 | Solver traffic +40.0% | Double N, rare X |
| 27 | FUGUE | #1604 | Nov 9, 2025 | Solver traffic +39.8% | Music term, UE ending |
| 28 | BYLAW | #1793 | May 17, 2026 | Solver traffic +38.6% | Compound word feel, Y vowel |
| 29 | DRYLY | #1909 | Sep 10, 2026 | Solver traffic +38.4% | No standard vowel, double Y |
| 30 | NYLON | #1571 | Oct 7, 2025 | Solver traffic +38.2% | Brand name origin, Y vowel |
Solver traffic figures: The Word Finder, data 15 Aug 2022 to 18 Oct 2026. Average guess figures: NYT WordleBot. Failure rates: community data and Preply analysis.
More Wordle Help
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the hardest Wordle word ever?
+By solver traffic data, PSHAW on July 15, 2026 is the hardest Wordle puzzle ever recorded. Help-seeking nearly doubled that day, a 98.9 percent spike above the 28-day baseline. The NYT’s own testers averaged six guesses out of six. The word opens with PS, a pairing that no standard opening word tests, and it is the kind of old-fashioned interjection that most people know but have never typed in their lives. By average guess count, EAGER, JIFFY, JAZZY and MOMMY all averaged 6.0 in the NYT era, with EAGER producing the highest documented failure rate at 51 percent of players across 1.78 million games.
What Wordle has the highest failure rate?
+EAGER on May 15, 2025 holds the highest documented failure rate at 51 percent, based on analysis of 1.78 million games. CORER in October 2024 had an estimated 43 percent failure rate. JIFFY, JAZZY and MOMMY all averaged 6.0 guesses, suggesting failure rates in a similar range, though exact figures for those puzzles are not publicly available from NYT. The 6.0 average means the average player used every single guess available, which typically corresponds to a failure rate somewhere between 30 and 55 percent depending on the word.
What makes a Wordle word genuinely hard?
+Five factors account for nearly all of the genuinely hard puzzles in the data. Repeated letters catch players who assume five unique letters, which applies to about 31 percent of all answers. Rare letters like J, Q, X, Z and V appear in under 5 percent of answers and are never tested by standard openers. Rhyme traps occur when the confirmed ending belongs to a large family of valid words, forcing players to guess through them one by one. No standard vowel breaks every vowel-first strategy. And some words sit in passive vocabulary, meaning players know them when they see them but never produce them when guessing blind. Words that combine two of these factors tend to produce the 6.0 averages.
Which year had the hardest Wordle puzzles overall?
+2024 produced three 6.0 average puzzles: EAGER, JIFFY and MOMMY. No other year in the data has three confirmed 6.0 average puzzles. 2026 is tracking above average for difficulty with 16 qualifying spikes through October against 17 in all of 2025. PSHAW alone in July 2026 was the single hardest day in four years of solver traffic records. So 2024 wins on average guesses and 2026 wins on solver traffic. 2022 likely had the most streak-ending words based on community reports, but data from that year is incomplete.
Has any Wordle puzzle been impossible to solve?
+No Wordle answer is technically impossible to solve because every answer is a real English word that appears on the NYT valid answer list. On the hardest days, like PSHAW and EAGER, WordleBot still recorded an average below 6.0, meaning the average player came close but did not fail outright. The issue is not impossibility but probability. A word like PSHAW, which starts with PS and appears in almost nobody’s typed vocabulary, creates a situation where even strong players run out of guesses before the word surfaces. A 51 percent failure rate on EAGER means just over half of players failed, not that the word was unsolvable.
What is the easiest Wordle word ever?
+CHAIR on September 11, 2025 and SPORT on May 27, 2025 are two of the most widely cited easiest puzzles. Preply identified both in their 2025 analysis as among the simplest puzzles of the year. Easy words share a common profile: five unique letters, all high frequency, no unusual combinations, and a word that appears in active daily vocabulary. CRANE, SLATE and RAISE have all been puzzle answers and produced low average guess counts when they appeared because players’ standard openers hit multiple letters immediately.
Does NYT make Wordle harder on purpose?
+NYT has not publicly confirmed any deliberate difficulty scheduling. The evidence from the data suggests the difficulty distribution is roughly consistent year to year, with between four and six qualifying hard spikes per hundred puzzles since 2022. There is no documented pattern of harder puzzles on specific days of the week, though some players report anecdotally that Sunday and Monday puzzles feel easier. The hardest puzzles tend to cluster around unusual letter patterns and vocabulary gaps rather than any calendar-based scheduling.
Alex Mercer is a puzzle games writer and the person behind TodaysWordleHint.com. Playing Wordle every day since Puzzle #196. Every puzzle gets solved before anything goes live. Hints, difficulty ratings, and solve walkthroughs all come from the actual daily play, not assembled after the fact.