The claim that DECAL was last year’s hardest Wordle answer likely raised a few eyebrows among victims of the Great CORER Massacre of 2024.
A spate of stories this week cited a press release from Unscramblerer – a word game tool – that deemed DECAL the hardest word last year in the New York Times’ wildly popular daily puzzle.
It went on to identify what it said were the hardest words for residents of each state. California’s, it said, was BEVEL, and other states’ stumpers included SMITH, BRAWN, INNER and OUTER.
Unscramblerer said it made its determination by analyzing Google Trends search data for the term “Wordle hint.”
The Times’ own WordleBot, which analyzes the game’s play, had a different verdict.
It said DECAL was well below the top spot, with an average difficulty of 4.3 (“easy breezy”), on a scale where 6 is hardest. The toughest word, it said, was CORER, the answer on Oct. 15, with a difficulty score of 5.7 (“very challenging”).
(It’s unlikely anybody who doesn’t play Wordle has made it this far, but just in case: Players have six tries to guess a five-letter word. With each guess, they are told which of their letters are correct and which are are in the right position in the word.)
The tech-and-games website Tom’s Guide said CORER was solved by only 56% of players, while the year’s second-hardest word, JOLLY, was solved by 71%. And according to Everdeen Mason, editorial director of Times Games, CORER snapped the win streak of 5.6 million players.
In a kinder puzzle, Wordle gave many players the gift of a one-guess solve with its Dec. 30 answer, STARE. The Times’ 2023 review of the year in Wordle said the most popular opening words were ADIEU, STARE and SLATE. The WordleBot itself has recently been opening with CRANE.