July 2023 in review

July 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 Jul 25, 2023 and the lowest on Jul 3, 2023; 7 answers doubled a letter and 9 answers used at least one of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.

The hardest and easiest answers

Highest estimated difficulty

WHEEL 2.5 pts · Jul 25, 2023 · #766

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

Lowest estimated difficulty

HOTEL 0 pts · Jul 3, 2023 · #744

HOTEL 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 Jul 3, 2023 to 2.5 on Jul 25, 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. July's 31 answers averaged 1.2 points on the estimated word-difficulty scale against 1.5 across the trailing six months, and a gap of 0.3 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

7 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.

9 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: Jul 1 (#742) doubled E; Jul 2 (#743) doubled S; Jul 9 (#750) doubled E; Jul 10 (#751) doubled L; Jul 17 (#758) doubled O; Jul 24 (#765) doubled B; Jul 25 (#766) doubled E.

Uncommon-letter days: Jul 5 (#746) used V; Jul 6 (#747) used W; Jul 8 (#749) used W; Jul 12 (#753) used W; Jul 16 (#757) used Z; Jul 20 (#761) used K; Jul 22 (#763) used Z; Jul 23 (#764) used W; Jul 25 (#766) 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
Jul 31, 2023 Monday #772 → STYLE Moderate
Jul 30, 2023 Sunday #771 → BATHE Easy
Jul 29, 2023 Saturday #770 → CURLY Moderate
Jul 28, 2023 Friday #769 → ETHOS Easy
Jul 27, 2023 Thursday #768 → DISCO Easy
Jul 26, 2023 Wednesday #767 → HEART Easy
Jul 25, 2023 Tuesday #766 → WHEEL Tricky
Jul 24, 2023 Monday #765 → HOBBY Tricky
Jul 23, 2023 Sunday #764 → WHALE Moderate
Jul 22, 2023 Saturday #763 → FROZE Moderate
Jul 21, 2023 Friday #762 → BURLY Tricky
Jul 20, 2023 Thursday #761 → FLANK Tricky
Jul 19, 2023 Wednesday #760 → TONIC Easy
Jul 18, 2023 Tuesday #759 → FLYER Moderate
Jul 17, 2023 Monday #758 → DROOP Tricky
Jul 16, 2023 Sunday #757 → TOPAZ Tricky
Jul 15, 2023 Saturday #756 → CRONE Tricky
Jul 14, 2023 Friday #755 → FIEND Easy
Jul 13, 2023 Thursday #754 → BARGE Easy
Jul 12, 2023 Wednesday #753 → WHIRL Tricky
Jul 11, 2023 Tuesday #752 → EARTH Easy
Jul 10, 2023 Monday #751 → FOLLY Tricky
Jul 9, 2023 Sunday #750 → ENTER Moderate
Jul 8, 2023 Saturday #749 → COWER Tricky
Jul 7, 2023 Friday #748 → DONUT Easy
Jul 6, 2023 Thursday #747 → WINDY Tricky
Jul 5, 2023 Wednesday #746 → VENOM Moderate
Jul 4, 2023 Tuesday #745 → IRATE Tricky
Jul 3, 2023 Monday #744 → HOTEL Easy
Jul 2, 2023 Sunday #743 → MOSSY Tricky
Jul 1, 2023 Saturday #742 → BLEEP 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
F Most common start (5)
E Most common end (7)
WHEEL 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 8
  • Tricky 13

From the guides

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