The answer to Wordle #1,138 was

PENNE: A type of short, diagonally cut pasta.

Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.

Word difficulty: Hard

Why it may be difficult: very uncommon in general English, repeated letters.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #1,138 scores 55/100 for solver difficulty (middle of the pack).

12 Possible answers after CRANE
110 Possible answers after SLATE
199 Possible answers after ADIEU
3 Guesses in the solver replay

This compares past puzzles under the same solver settings; it does not measure how players performed. Compare more puzzles →

Wordle #1,138, measured

This section compares PENNE's solver-difficulty percentile, first-guess results for ten familiar openers, and opt-in player reports. Each number identifies its dataset.

Solver difficulty, as a percentile

55/100

This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, PENNE measured harder for the solver than about 55% of all 1,907 recorded answers to date. Its rating is middle of the pack. It repeats E, N; CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU leave a large group.

Solver pressure ranks the answer within the pool; it does not measure player performance. The opener table compares first-guess results, and the contributed ratings report player results.

CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU benchmark

CRANE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 12 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, ADIEU left 199 candidates, about 17 times as many. AUDIO came back all gray. None of its letters appear in PENNE. The vowel-heavy probes ADIEU and AUDIO revealed comparatively little here. Vowel coverage helps only when the answer's vowels are still in doubt.

First-guess feedback each opener would have received against PENNE, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
CRANE CRANE 12
ARISE ARISE 62
RAISE RAISE 62
STARE STARE 90
TARSE TARSE 90
TRACE TRACE 108
SLATE SLATE 110
SALET SALET 172
AUDIO AUDIO 193
ADIEU ADIEU 199

“Answers still possible” counts the words in the site's 2,374-word working answer pool whose feedback would match that opener exactly. This is pattern arithmetic, not a simulation. A smaller number means the opener left fewer possible answers after the first guess. It does not describe later turns.

Contributed player ratings

Not enough contributed games to publish player figures for this puzzle. Per-puzzle numbers appear only after at least 10 opt-in games arrive. See how the Observatory collects and publishes player data →

What did you get?

Tap your result to compare it with contributed games. Your choice stays in this browser and is not sent anywhere.

1 Suppressed
2 Suppressed
3 Suppressed
4 Suppressed
5 Suppressed
6 Suppressed
X Suppressed

The bars pool all 26 contributed games across every completed puzzle. The Observatory does not publish per-puzzle guess distributions below its sample threshold, so this is the broadest available comparison. “Suppressed” marks a low-count cell.

Solver replay

One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to PENNE.

The solver reaches the answer in 3 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for July 31, 2024?
The Wordle answer for July 31, 2024 (puzzle #1138) was PENNE.
What does PENNE mean?
PENNE: A type of short, diagonally cut pasta.
Why was Wordle #1138 tricky?
PENNE is rated hard for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: very uncommon in general English, repeated letters.

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