Wordle #1,643 Answer
December 18, 2025 · Thursday
The answer to Wordle #1,643 was
RUGBY: A form of football in which players can hold or kick an ovoid ball; rugby football. The ball cannot be handled forwards and points are scored by touching the ball to the ground in the area past the opponent's territory or by kicking the ball between goalposts and over a crossbar.
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.
Why it may be difficult: only one vowel.
How difficult was it for the solver?
In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #1,643 scores 57/100 for solver difficulty (middle of the pack).
This compares past puzzles under the same solver settings; it does not measure how players performed. Compare more puzzles →
Wordle #1,643, measured
This section compares RUGBY'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
This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, RUGBY measured harder for the solver than about 57% of all 1,906 recorded answers to date. Its rating is middle of the pack. 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
RAISE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 11 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, SLATE left 229 candidates, about 21 times as many. SALET and SLATE came back all gray. None of their letters appear in RUGBY.
| Opener | First-guess feedback | Answers still possible |
|---|---|---|
| RAISE | RAISE | 11 |
| ARISE | ARISE | 65 |
| TRACE | TRACE | 66 |
| CRANE | CRANE | 91 |
| AUDIO | AUDIO | 94 |
| TARSE | TARSE | 95 |
| STARE | STARE | 102 |
| ADIEU | ADIEU | 193 |
| SALET | SALET | 229 |
| SLATE | SLATE | 229 |
“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 →
See the solver's route to RUGBY → It shows which guesses reduced the candidate pool on each turn.
Solver replay
One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to RUGBY.
The solver reaches the answer in 3 guesses.
Common questions
- What was the Wordle answer for December 18, 2025?
- The Wordle answer for December 18, 2025 (puzzle #1643) was RUGBY.
- What does RUGBY mean?
- RUGBY: A form of football in which players can hold or kick an ovoid ball; rugby football. The ball cannot be handled forwards and points are scored by touching the ball to the ground in the area past the opponent's territory or by kicking the ball between goalposts and over a crossbar.
- Why was Wordle #1643 tricky?
- RUGBY is rated moderate for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: only one vowel.