January 2024 in review

January 2024 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 Jan 29, 2024 and the lowest on Jan 1, 2024; 6 answers doubled a letter and 7 answers used at least one of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.

The hardest and easiest answers

Highest estimated difficulty

LEGGY 3.5 pts · Jan 29, 2024 · #954

LEGGY appears less than once per million words in the corpus-based frequency data, so familiarity alone sets a Hard floor. Its letters add points too, but corpus frequency sets the minimum rating.

Lowest estimated difficulty

MURAL 0 pts · Jan 1, 2024 · #926

MURAL 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 Jan 1, 2024 to 3.5 on Jan 29, 2024. 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. January's 31 answers averaged 1.1 points on the estimated word-difficulty scale against 1.2 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

6 of 31 answers doubled a letter, below the long-run archive rate of about 31%. Fewer than usual, so plain no-repeat guessing went largely unpunished.

7 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: Jan 2 (#927) doubled G; Jan 23 (#948) doubled L; Jan 26 (#951) doubled O; Jan 28 (#953) doubled E; Jan 29 (#954) doubled G; Jan 30 (#955) doubled E.

Uncommon-letter days: Jan 3 (#928) used W; Jan 10 (#935) used W; Jan 22 (#947) used K and W; Jan 25 (#950) used K; Jan 27 (#952) used K; Jan 30 (#955) used X; Jan 31 (#956) 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
Jan 31, 2024 Wednesday #956 → BULKY Tricky
Jan 30, 2024 Tuesday #955 → EXPEL Tricky
Jan 29, 2024 Monday #954 → LEGGY Hard
Jan 28, 2024 Sunday #953 → EMBER Tricky
Jan 27, 2024 Saturday #952 → SNAKE Moderate
Jan 26, 2024 Friday #951 → ALOOF Tricky
Jan 25, 2024 Thursday #950 → BLOCK Tricky
Jan 24, 2024 Wednesday #949 → RELIC Easy
Jan 23, 2024 Tuesday #948 → STILL Tricky
Jan 22, 2024 Monday #947 → TWEAK Tricky
Jan 21, 2024 Sunday #946 → NORTH Moderate
Jan 20, 2024 Saturday #945 → LARGE Easy
Jan 19, 2024 Friday #944 → THING Moderate
Jan 18, 2024 Thursday #943 → STOLE Easy
Jan 17, 2024 Wednesday #942 → COURT Easy
Jan 16, 2024 Tuesday #941 → BLOND Moderate
Jan 15, 2024 Monday #940 → LUNCH Moderate
Jan 14, 2024 Sunday #939 → DOING Easy
Jan 13, 2024 Saturday #938 → HEARD Easy
Jan 12, 2024 Friday #937 → ROUTE Easy
Jan 11, 2024 Thursday #936 → BRIEF Easy
Jan 10, 2024 Wednesday #935 → THREW Tricky
Jan 9, 2024 Tuesday #934 → LINER Easy
Jan 8, 2024 Monday #933 → FINAL Easy
Jan 7, 2024 Sunday #932 → STONY Moderate
Jan 6, 2024 Saturday #931 → CABLE Easy
Jan 5, 2024 Friday #930 → LUNGE Tricky
Jan 4, 2024 Thursday #929 → SCANT Moderate
Jan 3, 2024 Wednesday #928 → TWIRL Tricky
Jan 2, 2024 Tuesday #927 → AGING Moderate
Jan 1, 2024 Monday #926 → MURAL Easy

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
L Most common start (5)
E Most common end (6)
LEGGY 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 12
  • Moderate 8
  • Tricky 10
  • Hard 1

From the guides

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