Highest estimated difficulty
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.
See its meaning, Wordle status and opener stats.
Past Answers
Browse all 28 completed answers from February 2022, with a page for each puzzle's definition, difficulty and solver replay.
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.
Highest estimated difficulty
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
| Date | Day | Puzzle | Answer | Word 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 |
Past answers published on September 8 in earlier years. Every puzzle listed here is complete, so this section does not spoil a live game.
Corpus data records CHIRP less than once per million words of English, so familiar-looking letters can still hide an uncommon answer.
There is just one vowel to find, which makes vowel-heavy openers less useful. The consonants do most of the narrowing.
A trap-family answer: 4 answers fit the pattern _OUSE, so four green tiles can still leave several candidates.
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.
Estimated word difficulty combines wordfreq corpus frequency with repeats, uncommon letters and vowel count. It measures word properties, not player results. Compare solver difficulty →