Wordle #221 Answer
January 26, 2022 · Wednesday
The answer to Wordle #221 was
WHACK: The sound of a heavy strike.
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, only one vowel.
How difficult was it for the solver?
In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #221 scores 76/100 for solver difficulty (tricky).
This compares past puzzles under the same solver settings; it does not measure how players performed. Compare more puzzles →
Wordle #221, measured
This section compares WHACK'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, WHACK measured harder for the solver than about 76% of all 1,906 recorded answers to date. Its rating is tricky. The example solver route takes four turns; 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
TRACE 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, AUDIO left 442 candidates, about 37 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 |
|---|---|---|
| TRACE | TRACE | 12 |
| CRANE | CRANE | 13 |
| STARE | STARE | 38 |
| SLATE | SLATE | 49 |
| RAISE | RAISE | 96 |
| TARSE | TARSE | 101 |
| SALET | SALET | 104 |
| ARISE | ARISE | 159 |
| ADIEU | ADIEU | 289 |
| AUDIO | AUDIO | 442 |
“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 WHACK → It shows which guesses reduced the candidate pool on each turn.
Solver replay
One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to WHACK.
The solver reaches the answer in 4 guesses.
Common questions
- What was the Wordle answer for January 26, 2022?
- The Wordle answer for January 26, 2022 (puzzle #221) was WHACK.
- What does WHACK mean?
- WHACK: The sound of a heavy strike.
- Why was Wordle #221 tricky?
- WHACK is rated tricky for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: uncommon letters, only one vowel.