Today's Wordle is the hardest yet in 2024, but that doesn't even come close to describing just how difficult it is. “Wordle 1,037
It's certainly difficult to settle for less than six guesses and maintain Wordle's streak. But there are ways to play it to avoid heartache (or the equivalent of Wordle; it's just a game, after all). These strategies may be too late now, but they could save you the next time a game like this occurs. And it will be.
To explain what they are, you should include the following Spoilers for Today's Wordle, Game #1,037, Sunday, April 21, 2024. Therefore, please do not read on if you have not completed it yet. Before that, keep in mind that you may need today's Wordle tips.
How hard is it?
Okay, so let's talk about today's Wordle word and how difficult it was.
Answer for game #1,037 (assuming you've already played it) **Final spoiler alert**that's hilarious – and it's actually causing a lot of problems.
The way I rate the difficulty of each Wordle is by referring to WordleBot, the New York Times' AI-powered helper tool. Every day, WordleBot analyzes everyone's games and reports their average score. And now, people solve this problem with an average of 5.4 guesses. This is based on a random sample of 1,778,346 Wardlers who have played him to date, so it's a fairly large study.
Since the release of the WordleBot tool in April 2022, I have been tracking my average WordleBot score every day. This means we currently have a list of 749 games ranked by difficulty. By that standard, JOLLY became his most difficult Wordle to date in 2024, comfortably surpassing the previous holder of that title, his PIPER, with his 5.2 games in February.
But this only tells half the story. In fact, JOLLY is his toughest Wordle since June 2023, and he's actually equally good because he's the fourth worst. Until now. Only PARER (average score 6.3), MUMMY (5.8), and JAZZY (5.5) were more difficult, while FOYER, RIPER, and JOKER all had the same average score of 5.4.
Understandably, many players are struggling. As of this writing, approximately 233,791 Wordlers are unable to solve this problem, which is 13% of the total. That's a very high failure rate.
If you turn to Twitter, many players are posting their games and lamenting their good fortune. You can see the reaction.
Wordle 1,037 76 #Wordle1037👍😉🤣 pic.twitter.com/RWbFz6v5bKApril 20, 2024
Wordle 1,037 I did. Good luck pic.twitter.com/GjBRBRE9IEApril 21, 2024
Wordle 1,037 Oz8H0bsApril 21, 2024
One of the main causes of this mass failure, too many questions with answers, is easy to see at a cursory glance. But that's not all.
too many answers
Many of the most difficult Wordles of all time share the common theme of having too many answers. In other words, the solution is that just changing one letter (or sometimes two) can result in a different word.
There are several of these traps, including -IGHT, -OUND, and -ATCH. The first one has nine possible solutions: WIGHT, EIGHT, RIGHT, TIGHT, LIGHT, FIGHT, SIGHT, MIGHT, NIGHT. The second has eight: WOUND, ROUND, POUND, HOUND, FOUND, SOUND, MOUND, BOUND, and the third has seven (WATCH, PATCH, LATCH, HATCH, MATCH, BATCH, CATCH).
The -OLLY trap, on the other hand, is equivalent to -ATCH because there are seven distinct answers: LOLLY, JOLLY, HOLLY, GOLLY, FOLLY, MOLLY, DOLLY. It's there in the worst possible format.
This type of game is a nightmare when played on hard mode. In hard mode, he will easily get stuck with four green letters and have to guess the letters randomly to find the correct one. So my first tip is simply don't play on hard mode. Or, if so, you should keep in mind that something like this can happen and prevent it in the first place.
To make matters worse, the final answer was JOLLY, which starts with the least common letter in the game. This is what I proved while analyzing all Wordle answers. J appears in only 27 of Wordle's 2,309 original solutions, so it's not a letter that most people use often.
On top of that, JOLLY also includes repeating letters, which in and of themselves are less common than receiving five individual letters, but with a game set up to make life difficult. I am.
How to play and win any of these games
The key to winning a game like JOLLY is to narrow down your choices as quickly as possible, unless you're playing on hard mode.
What this means is, don't chase high scores. Because if you do, disaster awaits you. Suppose that on the third guess you find out that this is the -OLLY word. This is not unreasonable depending on the starting word. In that scenario, you might want to guess common words like FOLLY, Say, and HOLLY for his above-average 4/6 score.
Please do not do this.
Instead, the moment you realize there are more answers left than guesses, the only way to consistently beat Wordle is to find narrower words that eliminate as many choices as possible. In the example above, it was “may”. Because one guess made him rule out MOLLY, GOLLY and HOLLY, leaving only her JOLLY to play next time.
This goes against many people's instincts and makes them feel uncomfortable because they have to omit the green text. But that's what WordleBot does: “Bots are much smarter than you or me.”
In some cases, you may need to play two such words. In fact, I did. LOWLY, guessed before MIGHT, was chosen to exclude LOLLY from the options. The important thing is to see what all the choices are, make a list of all possible letters (in this case F, H, G, L, M, D, J) and write the next letter as much as possible. Think of words that contain many words. them as much as possible.
You could consider this an overly cautious and perhaps sneaky way to play Wordle, but if you value streaks, it's the only approach that makes sense.