September 2021 in review

September 2021 is complete, with 30 puzzles and every date recorded. On the site's word-property scale it was an ordinary month. The highest estimated difficulty occurred on Sep 5, 2021 and the lowest on Sep 2, 2021; 12 answers doubled a letter and 3 answers used at least one of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.

The hardest and easiest answers

Highest estimated difficulty

WOOER 5 pts · Sep 5, 2021 · #78

WOOER appears less than once per million words in the corpus-based frequency data, so familiarity alone sets a Brutal floor. Its letters add points too, but corpus frequency sets the minimum rating.

Lowest estimated difficulty

DELTA 0 pts · Sep 2, 2021 · #75

DELTA 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 Sep 2, 2021 to 5 on Sep 5, 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. September's 30 answers averaged 1.7 points on the estimated word-difficulty scale against 1.7 across the trailing three months, and a gap of less than 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

12 of 30 answers doubled a letter, in line with the long-run archive rate of about 31%. This matches the usual rate. Test a repeat when the board stalls.

3 of 30 answers used at least one of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W, below 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: Sep 1 (#74) doubled E; Sep 4 (#77) doubled T; Sep 5 (#78) doubled O; Sep 8 (#81) doubled R; Sep 10 (#83) doubled L; Sep 11 (#84) doubled T; Sep 12 (#85) doubled E; Sep 16 (#89) doubled O; Sep 20 (#93) doubled A and M; Sep 23 (#96) doubled C and I; Sep 28 (#101) doubled A; Sep 29 (#102) doubled A.

Uncommon-letter days: Sep 3 (#76) used K; Sep 5 (#78) used W; Sep 23 (#96) used V.

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
Sep 30, 2021 Thursday #103 → SPICY Moderate
Sep 29, 2021 Wednesday #102 → AGATE Tricky
Sep 28, 2021 Tuesday #101 → SALAD Moderate
Sep 27, 2021 Monday #100 → BASIC Easy
Sep 26, 2021 Sunday #99 → MOULT Hard
Sep 25, 2021 Saturday #98 → CORNY Moderate
Sep 24, 2021 Friday #97 → FORGE Easy
Sep 23, 2021 Thursday #96 → CIVIC Hard
Sep 22, 2021 Wednesday #95 → ISLET Tricky
Sep 21, 2021 Tuesday #94 → LABOR Easy
Sep 20, 2021 Monday #93 → GAMMA Tricky
Sep 19, 2021 Sunday #92 → LYING Moderate
Sep 18, 2021 Saturday #91 → AUDIT Easy
Sep 17, 2021 Friday #90 → ROUND Easy
Sep 16, 2021 Thursday #89 → LOOPY Tricky
Sep 15, 2021 Wednesday #88 → LUSTY Tricky
Sep 14, 2021 Tuesday #87 → GOLEM Tricky
Sep 13, 2021 Monday #86 → GONER Hard
Sep 12, 2021 Sunday #85 → GREET Moderate
Sep 11, 2021 Saturday #84 → START Tricky
Sep 10, 2021 Friday #83 → LAPEL Tricky
Sep 9, 2021 Thursday #82 → BIOME Tricky
Sep 8, 2021 Wednesday #81 → PARRY Tricky
Sep 7, 2021 Tuesday #80 → SHRUB Moderate
Sep 6, 2021 Monday #79 → FRONT Moderate
Sep 5, 2021 Sunday #78 → WOOER Brutal
Sep 4, 2021 Saturday #77 → TOTEM Moderate
Sep 3, 2021 Friday #76 → FLICK Tricky
Sep 2, 2021 Thursday #75 → DELTA Easy
Sep 1, 2021 Wednesday #74 → BLEED Moderate

On this day in Wordle

Past answers published on September 8 in earlier years. Every puzzle listed here is complete, so this section does not spoil a live game.

  1. 1 year ago
    Tricky

    Corpus data records CHIRP less than once per million words of English, so familiar-looking letters can still hide an uncommon answer.

    Puzzle #1,542 → Word page →

  2. 2 years ago
    Tricky

    There is just one vowel to find, which makes vowel-heavy openers less useful. The consonants do most of the narrowing.

    Puzzle #1,177 → Word page →

  3. 3 years ago
    Easy

    A trap-family answer: 4 answers fit the pattern _OUSE, so four green tiles can still leave several candidates.

    Puzzle #811 → 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

30 Answers
L Most common start (5)
T Most common end (6)
WOOER 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 6
  • Moderate 9
  • Tricky 11
  • Hard 3
  • Brutal 1

From the guides

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