The Hardest and Easiest Wordle Words, Measured

The short answer: GUPPY is the hardest recorded answer by this site's solver measure. RAISE is the easiest. The ranking tells us how much pressure each answer puts on one consistent solving method. It does not grade the people who played that day.

Hard answers tend to leave several plausible choices, hide inside a one-letter trap such as _ATCH, or repeat a letter. Easy answers tend to split away from their neighbours quickly.

A percentile is a place in the recorded distribution. A score of 90 means the answer ranks at or above roughly nine out of ten distinct answers in this archive. A score of 10 sits near the easier end. Tied answers share a score.

How we tested this

The measure covers 1,922 completed puzzles and 1,898 distinct answer words from 19 June 2021 to 22 September 2026. It combines four clues: the average shortlist left by CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU, the length of a pinned solver route, the size of the largest one-letter trap family, and repeated letters. A newly added answer without a route uses a neutral three-turn value and shows an ellipsis in the table. Read the math guide for the feedback-group calculation.

The separate What makes a Wordle hard? study checks how those features relate to pinned solver turns. It publishes uncertainty and limitations rather than treating the ranking as a fact about every player.

Use the two tables below to compare a hard and an easy answer. Each row gives the percentile, solver turns and main reason.

The 25 hardest answers on record

Start with the final column. It explains the mechanism in ordinary language. The puzzle link then lets you inspect the dated evidence. When percentiles tie, solver turns break the tie first, followed by shortlist size and trap-family size.

Two lessons keep appearing. First, one yellow tile does not tell you whether the answer contains a second copy of that letter. Second, guessing members of a large trap family one by one can waste turns. The trap-family guide shows how a separating word can test several endings at once.

The 15 easiest answers on record

These answers have the lowest solver-pressure scores. The final column gives the main measured factor behind each score.

“Easy” does not mean “familiar.” A rare letter can make a word stand out from the rest of the answer pool. That is why an unusual word can be easy for this solver while an everyday word sits in a difficult trap family.

Three habits to take into your next game

1. Count the candidates. If several words differ in one slot, name them before choosing a guess.
2. Look for a separator. Test several candidate letters together instead of trying one answer at a time.
3. Keep doubles alive. A yellow letter can still appear twice in the answer.

This page updates as puzzles become complete worldwide. Use the difficulty explorer to search every recorded puzzle and open a dated breakdown.

Sources and reuse: this ranking is bound to current-data snapshot current-2026-09-22-dd22a2c5d10b681d, covering globally completed puzzles through 2026-09-22. The exact 25 hardest and 15 easiest displayed rows, plus reusable chart files, are below. Read the solver method, request a correction, or use the social preview card.