Today's Wordle is the toughest in two years and people are angry – here's why and my tips for avoiding defeat next time

Kathleen William October 15, 2024

Every now and then there's a Wordle that's so difficult that it ends thousands of streaks at once. Today's Wordle is one of them.

According to WordleBot, the New York Times' in-game assistance tool, puzzle #1,214 has an average score of 5.7. This makes it the heaviest since October 2022 and even the third heaviest always. Avid worders inevitably took to Twitter (or X, whatever) to share their tales of woe with the world. “Word 1,214

So why is it so difficult, 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 WORDLE, GAME #1,214, ON TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2024 will follow.

Third heaviest of all time

Okay, the solution is close, so really stop reading if you don't want to know what it's about.

Or, if you haven't played yet, check out my NYT Wordle Today page for some last minute tips.

**FINAL SPOILER ALERT**

Today's answer is CORER. Yes, CORER.

At the time of writing, WordleBot has analyzed around 42,000 games, of which around 10,000 had failed; that's about 25%. However, another 30% solved the problem based only on a final guess.

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

I've recorded WordleBot's average scores every day since its launch in April 2022, meaning I now have a list of 926 games, sorted by difficulty. In this regard, CORER is the third hardest of all time, behind only PARER (game #454, average score 6.3) and MUMMY (#491, 5.8), both at the end of 2022.

The common theme of today's failures is clear from a look at Twitter, where the familiar rows of green squares in the middle have a telltale gap from top to bottom:

Word 1,214 X/6 🟩 This has to be the worst Wordle ever!October 15, 2024

Wordle 1,214 is over. That's a bad word.October 15, 2024

Wordle 1.214 X/6 🟩Abysmal and I hate this app and I hate this worldOctober 15, 2024

A perfect world storm

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

It's a common scenario that plays out with words ending in ER, simply because there are so many of them. My analysis of each Wordle answer shows that 141 of the game's 2,309 original solutions end in ER, making it by far the most likely ending. Therefore, it's easy to recognize the pattern – but it's incredibly difficult to then narrow down the correct beginning of the word.

This leads to the pattern above, where people with CO-ER kept adding the wrong middle letter.

Not only is it a word with too many answers and an ER word, but CORER also contains a repeated letter, R. These make the game harder by default, since most people don't like playing repetition; it feels like throwing away a letter.

Finally, there's the fact that CORER really isn't a common word since, judging by the Twitter reactions, some people have never heard of it.

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

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

The best way to solve this kind of Wordle

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

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

I'd like to start by pointing out that I can't help you if you're playing Wordle on hard mode. In difficult mode, you are not allowed to omit letters that are already green. So when you're faced with the CO-ER pattern early on, you'll have no choice but to blindly guess letters to find the right letter. There are good strategies to avoid defeat on hard mode, but you'll have to look elsewhere for them.

However, if you played in Standard Mode, I have some advice.

First, you should determine as early as possible whether it is an ER word or not. The obvious trick is to design your seed word to include both letters. STARE was my favorite opening word for years until I switched to playing randomly for variety, and it is 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.

Each of these answers points the way to an ER answer, but if your starting word does not contain one or both of these letters, you should correct it the second time, unless you know for sure that this is not possible (because one has already been excluded or another letter is green at the end).

I did that today. My random starting word was VINYL, which was useless, but I immediately followed with STARE, revealing the yellow R and E.

NYT Wordle answer for game 1214 on green background

(Image credit: New York Times)

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

The best approach at this stage is to list as many words as possible to see what letters may be in play. Apparently I still had 68 open at this point (WordleBot later told me this), and I estimate I found about half of them. That was enough to give me a good idea of which letters were best to play next.

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

It may seem silly to play a repeated letter at this point, but there are plenty of answers that fit this pattern, including RIDER, RUDER, ROWER, ROGER CURER, and indeed CORER – plus plenty of non-ER words that still fit (RECUR, ERROR, FREER).

So I put it all together and played ROPER, and that did the trick in narrowing my options down to just one. Then I messed up by playing BORER instead of CORER, which was a shame, but in the end my winning streak remained intact.

The most important thing, especially what I said before, is consists of never blindly guessing letters in search of the missing letter.

Let's say you had CO-ER on the third guess – it would be tempting to guess COVER next, right? Don't do it. Instead, look at what words they could be: COVER, COWER, CORER and CODER for example. Your next guess should then be something like VOWED, as this excludes COVER, COWER and CODER depending on whether V, W or D turns yellow/green. And if none of them did, the answer would be CORER.

It may go against your instincts to do this because, in a way, you're wasting a guess – you know it won't be the answer. But scoring a five when it could have been a four is always better than complete failure. So don't be a hero – play it safe and live to fight another day.

That may be no consolation to you today if you've lost your streak, but on the bright side, it's very unlikely we'll get another word as difficult as this one for a while. Good luck!

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