October 2021 in review

October 2021 is complete, with 31 puzzles and every date recorded. On the site's word-property scale it was an ordinary month. The highest estimated difficulty occurred on Oct 31, 2021 and the lowest on Oct 6, 2021; 13 answers doubled a letter and 11 answers used at least one of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.

The hardest and easiest answers

Highest estimated difficulty

CLICK 3.5 pts · Oct 31, 2021 · #134

CLICK combines the scale's two heaviest penalties: it repeats C and contains uncommon K, which ordinary opening guesses rarely test.

Lowest estimated difficulty

GUILD 0 pts · Oct 6, 2021 · #109

GUILD has five distinct letters, 2 vowels and no uncommon letters. Common first guesses therefore test many of its letters.

The spread ran from 0 points on Oct 6, 2021 to 3.5 on Oct 31, 2021. Both numbers describe single words, not a sequence. A hard day and an easy one can occur in the same week, so the trend line below compares whole months rather than individual days.

The difficulty trend

An ordinary month. October's 31 answers averaged 1.6 points on the estimated word-difficulty scale against 1.7 across the trailing four months, and a gap of 0.1 points sits inside the normal month-to-month spread of about ±0.3. At roughly thirty answers a month that is sampling noise, not a change in how answers were chosen. The difference does not support changing openers or strategy. The scale combines general-English corpus frequency with repeats, uncommon letters and missing vowels. It measures word properties, not player results.

Letters and patterns

13 of 31 answers doubled a letter, above the long-run archive rate of about 31%. That is the pattern that punishes never-repeat guessing: on a stalled board, testing a doubled letter should have come earlier than usual.

11 of 31 answers used at least one of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W, in line with the long-run archive rate of about 28%. Standard openers test these letters less often, so the difficulty scale adds a penalty for each one.

No day reused an earlier answer: every puzzle this month was a first appearance in the site's recorded history. Repeats do happen, so a word having been a solution before is still no reason to drop it from your guesses.

Double-letter days: Oct 2 (#105) doubled S; Oct 5 (#108) doubled B; Oct 7 (#110) doubled A; Oct 8 (#111) doubled O; Oct 10 (#113) doubled H; Oct 18 (#121) doubled E; Oct 21 (#124) doubled E; Oct 22 (#125) doubled E; Oct 23 (#126) doubled S; Oct 27 (#130) doubled O; Oct 28 (#131) doubled E; Oct 30 (#133) doubled G; Oct 31 (#134) doubled C.

Uncommon-letter days: Oct 3 (#106) used J; Oct 5 (#108) used K; Oct 7 (#110) used K; Oct 13 (#116) used W; Oct 18 (#121) used W; Oct 20 (#123) used J; Oct 24 (#127) used W; Oct 26 (#129) used Z; Oct 27 (#130) used Z; Oct 29 (#132) used W; Oct 31 (#134) used K.

How players fared

No day from this month has reached the Observatory's minimum public sample of 10 opt-in games, so no crowd numbers appear. The gate is deliberate: below it, a handful of results could stand in for a crowd and misrepresent a day.

Answer words are shown only for completed puzzles. Open a puzzle for its definition, difficulty and solver replay.

DateDayPuzzleAnswerWord difficulty
Oct 31, 2021 Sunday #134 → CLICK Used 2 times Hard
Oct 30, 2021 Saturday #133 → GOUGE Tricky
Oct 29, 2021 Friday #132 → WORLD Tricky
Oct 28, 2021 Thursday #131 → ERODE Moderate
Oct 27, 2021 Wednesday #130 → BOOZY Tricky
Oct 26, 2021 Tuesday #129 → DOZEN Moderate
Oct 25, 2021 Monday #128 → FLING Moderate
Oct 24, 2021 Sunday #127 → GROWL Tricky
Oct 23, 2021 Saturday #126 → ABYSS Tricky
Oct 22, 2021 Friday #125 → STEED Tricky
Oct 21, 2021 Thursday #124 → ENEMA Tricky
Oct 20, 2021 Wednesday #123 → JAUNT Tricky
Oct 19, 2021 Tuesday #122 → COMET Used 2 times Easy
Oct 18, 2021 Monday #121 → TWEED Tricky
Oct 17, 2021 Sunday #120 → PILOT Easy
Oct 16, 2021 Saturday #119 → DUTCH Moderate
Oct 15, 2021 Friday #118 → BELCH Hard
Oct 14, 2021 Thursday #117 → OUGHT Easy
Oct 13, 2021 Wednesday #116 → DOWRY Tricky
Oct 12, 2021 Tuesday #115 → THUMB Used 2 times Moderate
Oct 11, 2021 Monday #114 → HYPER Moderate
Oct 10, 2021 Sunday #113 → HATCH Tricky
Oct 9, 2021 Saturday #112 → ALONE Easy
Oct 8, 2021 Friday #111 → MOTOR Moderate
Oct 7, 2021 Thursday #110 → ABACK Tricky
Oct 6, 2021 Wednesday #109 → GUILD Easy
Oct 5, 2021 Tuesday #108 → KEBAB Tricky
Oct 4, 2021 Monday #107 → SPEND Moderate
Oct 3, 2021 Sunday #106 → FJORD Tricky
Oct 2, 2021 Saturday #105 → ESSAY Moderate
Oct 1, 2021 Friday #104 → SPRAY Moderate

On this day in Wordle

Past answers published on September 7 in earlier years. Every puzzle listed here is complete, so this section does not spoil a live game.

  1. 1 year ago
    Easy

    Nothing unusual appears in the letters: all five are distinct and familiar. Ordinary letter coverage works well on words like this.

    Puzzle #1,541 → Word page →

  2. 2 years ago
    Moderate

    Nothing unusual appears in the letters: all five are distinct and familiar. Ordinary letter coverage works well on words like this.

    Puzzle #1,176 → Word page →

  3. 3 years ago
    Hard

    The doubled L raises the difficulty. Once a letter shows up yellow or green, few players try it a second time unprompted.

    Puzzle #810 → Word page →

The Easy-to-Brutal badge combines general-English corpus frequency with repeats, uncommon letters and vowel count. It estimates word difficulty, not player results. Dates come from the site's recorded answer history.

Archive totals

31 Answers
G Most common start (3)
D Most common end (6)
CLICK Highest estimated difficulty

Estimated word difficulty combines wordfreq corpus frequency with repeats, uncommon letters and vowel count. It measures word properties, not player results. Compare solver difficulty →

  • Easy 5
  • Moderate 10
  • Tricky 14
  • Hard 2

From the guides

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