August 2023 in review

August 2023 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 Aug 23, 2023 and the lowest on Aug 21, 2023; 10 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

VERVE 5 pts · Aug 23, 2023 · #795

VERVE 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

BEACH 0 pts · Aug 21, 2023 · #793

BEACH 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 Aug 21, 2023 to 5 on Aug 23, 2023. 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. August's 31 answers averaged 1.7 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

10 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.

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: Aug 1 (#773) doubled T; Aug 2 (#774) doubled E; Aug 6 (#778) doubled P; Aug 7 (#779) doubled O; Aug 8 (#780) doubled L; Aug 11 (#783) doubled L; Aug 17 (#789) doubled S; Aug 19 (#791) doubled A and M; Aug 23 (#795) doubled E and V; Aug 27 (#799) doubled E.

Uncommon-letter days: Aug 7 (#779) used K; Aug 9 (#781) used V; Aug 12 (#784) used K and Q; Aug 13 (#785) used W; Aug 14 (#786) used K; Aug 15 (#787) used X; Aug 18 (#790) used X; Aug 20 (#792) used Q; Aug 23 (#795) used V; Aug 24 (#796) used W; Aug 28 (#800) 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
Aug 31, 2023 Thursday #803 → BRIDE Easy
Aug 30, 2023 Wednesday #802 → AUDIO Easy
Aug 29, 2023 Tuesday #801 → CAPER Tricky
Aug 28, 2023 Monday #800 → WRITE Moderate
Aug 27, 2023 Sunday #799 → PEACE Moderate
Aug 26, 2023 Saturday #798 → CHOIR Easy
Aug 25, 2023 Friday #797 → OCEAN Easy
Aug 24, 2023 Thursday #796 → WORDY Tricky
Aug 23, 2023 Wednesday #795 → VERVE Brutal
Aug 22, 2023 Tuesday #794 → SPICE Easy
Aug 21, 2023 Monday #793 → BEACH Easy
Aug 20, 2023 Sunday #792 → QUEST Moderate
Aug 19, 2023 Saturday #791 → MAGMA Tricky
Aug 18, 2023 Friday #790 → EXACT Moderate
Aug 17, 2023 Thursday #789 → AMISS Tricky
Aug 16, 2023 Wednesday #788 → SCRUB Moderate
Aug 15, 2023 Tuesday #787 → INDEX Moderate
Aug 14, 2023 Monday #786 → SNAKY Brutal
Aug 13, 2023 Sunday #785 → WRATH Tricky
Aug 12, 2023 Saturday #784 → QUICK Tricky
Aug 11, 2023 Friday #783 → HELLO Moderate
Aug 10, 2023 Thursday #782 → EMPTY Moderate
Aug 9, 2023 Wednesday #781 → LOVER Moderate
Aug 8, 2023 Tuesday #780 → BULLY Tricky
Aug 7, 2023 Monday #779 → BROOK Tricky
Aug 6, 2023 Sunday #778 → POLYP Hard
Aug 5, 2023 Saturday #777 → ANODE Tricky
Aug 4, 2023 Friday #776 → CHART Moderate
Aug 3, 2023 Thursday #775 → PARTY Moderate
Aug 2, 2023 Wednesday #774 → BEGET Hard
Aug 1, 2023 Tuesday #773 → TENTH Tricky

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

31 Answers
B Most common start (5)
E Most common end (6)
VERVE 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 11
  • Tricky 10
  • Hard 2
  • Brutal 2

From the guides

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