March 2022 in review

March 2022 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 Mar 31, 2022 and the lowest on Mar 3, 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

LOWLY 3.5 pts · Mar 31, 2022 · #285

LOWLY combines the scale's two heaviest penalties: it repeats L and contains uncommon W, which ordinary opening guesses rarely test.

Lowest estimated difficulty

MOURN 0 pts · Mar 3, 2022 · #257

MOURN 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 Mar 3, 2022 to 3.5 on Mar 31, 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. March's 31 answers averaged 1.3 points on the estimated word-difficulty scale against 1.4 across the trailing six months, and a gap of 0.2 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 31 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 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: Mar 1 (#255) doubled E; Mar 4 (#258) doubled A; Mar 8 (#262) doubled E; Mar 15 (#269) doubled E; Mar 19 (#273) doubled L; Mar 20 (#274) doubled E; Mar 22 (#276) doubled S; Mar 29 (#283) doubled L; Mar 31 (#285) doubled L.

Uncommon-letter days: Mar 8 (#262) used W; Mar 11 (#265) used W; Mar 17 (#271) used V; Mar 19 (#273) used W; Mar 20 (#274) used W; Mar 26 (#280) used X; Mar 30 (#284) used V; Mar 31 (#285) used W.

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
Mar 31, 2022 Thursday #285 → LOWLY Hard
Mar 30, 2022 Wednesday #284 → STOVE Moderate
Mar 29, 2022 Tuesday #283 → SHALL Tricky
Mar 28, 2022 Monday #282 → FOUND Easy
Mar 27, 2022 Sunday #281 → NYMPH Tricky
Mar 26, 2022 Saturday #280 → EPOXY Moderate
Mar 25, 2022 Friday #279 → DEPOT Easy
Mar 24, 2022 Thursday #278 → CHEST Moderate
Mar 23, 2022 Wednesday #277 → PURGE Easy
Mar 22, 2022 Tuesday #276 → SLOSH Hard
Mar 21, 2022 Monday #275 → THEIR Easy
Mar 20, 2022 Sunday #274 → RENEW Tricky
Mar 19, 2022 Saturday #273 → ALLOW Tricky
Mar 18, 2022 Friday #272 → SAUTE Hard
Mar 17, 2022 Thursday #271 → MOVIE Moderate
Mar 16, 2022 Wednesday #270 → CATER Easy
Mar 15, 2022 Tuesday #269 → TEASE Moderate
Mar 14, 2022 Monday #268 → SMELT Tricky
Mar 13, 2022 Sunday #267 → FOCUS Easy
Mar 12, 2022 Saturday #266 → TODAY Easy
Mar 11, 2022 Friday #265 → WATCH Tricky
Mar 10, 2022 Thursday #264 → LAPSE Easy
Mar 9, 2022 Wednesday #263 → MONTH Moderate
Mar 8, 2022 Tuesday #262 → SWEET Tricky
Mar 7, 2022 Monday #261 → HOARD Easy
Mar 6, 2022 Sunday #260 → CLOTH Moderate
Mar 5, 2022 Saturday #259 → BRINE Easy
Mar 4, 2022 Friday #258 → AHEAD Moderate
Mar 3, 2022 Thursday #257 → MOURN Easy
Mar 2, 2022 Wednesday #256 → NASTY Moderate
Mar 1, 2022 Tuesday #255 → RUPEE 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
S Most common start (6)
E Most common end (8)
LOWLY 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 11
  • Moderate 10
  • Tricky 7
  • Hard 3

From the guides

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