Wordle #178 Answer
December 14, 2021 · Tuesday
The answer to Wordle #178 was
VITAL: Relating to or characteristic of life.
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: uncommon letters.
How difficult was it for the solver?
In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #178 scores 58/100 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 #178, measured
This section compares VITAL'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, VITAL measured harder for the solver than about 58% of all 1,906 recorded answers to date. Its rating is middle of the pack. The example solver route takes four turns; CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU leave about 73.3 possible answers.
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
SALET left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 14 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, CRANE left 141 candidates, about 10 times as many. The vowel-heavy probes ADIEU and AUDIO revealed comparatively little here. Vowel coverage helps only when the answer's vowels are still in doubt.
| Opener | First-guess feedback | Answers still possible |
|---|---|---|
| SALET | SALET | 14 |
| SLATE | SLATE | 17 |
| TARSE | TARSE | 29 |
| RAISE | RAISE | 34 |
| ARISE | ARISE | 35 |
| AUDIO | AUDIO | 45 |
| TRACE | TRACE | 54 |
| ADIEU | ADIEU | 62 |
| STARE | STARE | 74 |
| CRANE | CRANE | 141 |
“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 VITAL → It shows which guesses reduced the candidate pool on each turn.
Solver replay
One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to VITAL.
The solver reaches the answer in 4 guesses.
Common questions
- What was the Wordle answer for December 14, 2021?
- The Wordle answer for December 14, 2021 (puzzle #178) was VITAL.
- What does VITAL mean?
- VITAL: Relating to or characteristic of life.
- Why was Wordle #178 tricky?
- VITAL is rated moderate for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: uncommon letters.