February 2022 in review

February 2022 is complete, with 28 puzzles and every date recorded. On the site's word-property scale it was an ordinary month. The highest estimated difficulty occurred on Feb 25, 2022 and the lowest on Feb 1, 2022; 9 answers doubled a letter and 8 answers used at least one of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.

The hardest and easiest answers

Highest estimated difficulty

VIVID 5 pts · Feb 25, 2022 · #251

VIVID doubles V, an uncommon letter. The scale's two heaviest penalties land on one letter because ordinary openers rarely probe V at all, let alone twice.

Lowest estimated difficulty

THOSE 0 pts · Feb 1, 2022 · #227

THOSE 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 Feb 1, 2022 to 5 on Feb 25, 2022. 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. February's 28 answers averaged 1.3 points on the estimated word-difficulty scale against 1.4 across the trailing six 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

9 of 28 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.

8 of 28 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: Feb 6 (#232) doubled L; Feb 7 (#233) doubled E; Feb 14 (#240) doubled C; Feb 15 (#241) doubled A; Feb 18 (#244) doubled D; Feb 19 (#245) doubled L; Feb 20 (#246) doubled T; Feb 25 (#251) doubled I and V; Feb 26 (#252) doubled L.

Uncommon-letter days: Feb 6 (#232) used K; Feb 16 (#242) used K; Feb 17 (#243) used K; Feb 19 (#245) used W; Feb 23 (#249) used V; Feb 24 (#250) used K; Feb 25 (#251) used V; Feb 28 (#254) 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
Feb 28, 2022 Monday #254 → CHOKE Moderate
Feb 27, 2022 Sunday #253 → CHANT Moderate
Feb 26, 2022 Saturday #252 → SPILL Tricky
Feb 25, 2022 Friday #251 → VIVID Brutal
Feb 24, 2022 Thursday #250 → BLOKE Moderate
Feb 23, 2022 Wednesday #249 → TROVE Moderate
Feb 22, 2022 Tuesday #248 → THORN Moderate
Feb 21, 2022 Monday #247 → OTHER Easy
Feb 20, 2022 Sunday #246 → TACIT Tricky
Feb 19, 2022 Saturday #245 → SWILL Hard
Feb 18, 2022 Friday #244 → DODGE Moderate
Feb 17, 2022 Thursday #243 → SHAKE Moderate
Feb 16, 2022 Wednesday #242 → CAULK Hard
Feb 15, 2022 Tuesday #241 → AROMA Moderate
Feb 14, 2022 Monday #240 → CYNIC Tricky
Feb 13, 2022 Sunday #239 → ROBIN Easy
Feb 12, 2022 Saturday #238 → ULTRA Easy
Feb 11, 2022 Friday #237 → ULCER Easy
Feb 10, 2022 Thursday #236 → PAUSE Easy
Feb 9, 2022 Wednesday #235 → HUMOR Easy
Feb 8, 2022 Tuesday #234 → FRAME Easy
Feb 7, 2022 Monday #233 → ELDER Moderate
Feb 6, 2022 Sunday #232 → SKILL Hard
Feb 5, 2022 Saturday #231 → ALOFT Easy
Feb 4, 2022 Friday #230 → PLEAT Hard
Feb 3, 2022 Thursday #229 → SHARD Moderate
Feb 2, 2022 Wednesday #228 → MOIST Easy
Feb 1, 2022 Tuesday #227 → THOSE Easy

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

28 Answers
S Most common start (5)
E Most common end (8)
VIVID 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 10
  • Moderate 10
  • Tricky 3
  • Hard 4
  • Brutal 1

From the guides

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