The answer to Wordle #118 was

BELCH: To expel (gas) from the stomach through the mouth; especially, to do so loudly.

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, only one vowel.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #118 scores 39/100 for solver difficulty (middle of the pack).

20 Possible answers after CRANE
63 Possible answers after SLATE
199 Possible answers after ADIEU
4 Words in the BE_CH family
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 #118, measured

This section compares BELCH'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

39/100

This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, BELCH measured harder for the solver than about 39% of all 1,906 recorded answers to date. Its rating is middle of the pack. CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU leave a large group; it has a 4-word BE_CH family.

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

TRACE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 10 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, ADIEU left 199 candidates, about 20 times as many. AUDIO came back all gray. None of its letters appear in BELCH. 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 BELCH, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
TRACE TRACE 10
SALET SALET 16
CRANE CRANE 20
SLATE SLATE 63
STARE STARE 119
TARSE TARSE 119
ARISE ARISE 123
RAISE RAISE 123
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 BELCH.

The solver reaches the answer in 3 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for October 15, 2021?
The Wordle answer for October 15, 2021 (puzzle #118) was BELCH.
What does BELCH mean?
BELCH: To expel (gas) from the stomach through the mouth; especially, to do so loudly.
Why was Wordle #118 tricky?
BELCH is rated hard for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: very uncommon in general English, only one vowel.

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