Wordle #268 Answer
March 14, 2022 · Monday
The answer to Wordle #268 was
SMELT: Any small anadromous fish of the family Osmeridae, found in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and in lakes in North America and northern part of Europe.
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 in general English, only one vowel.
How difficult was it for the solver?
In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #268 scores 39/100 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 #268, measured
This section compares SMELT'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, SMELT 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.
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 3 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, ADIEU left 199 candidates, about 66 times as many. AUDIO came back all gray. None of its letters appear in SMELT. 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 | 3 |
| SLATE | SLATE | 3 |
| STARE | STARE | 10 |
| TARSE | TARSE | 23 |
| ARISE | ARISE | 41 |
| RAISE | RAISE | 41 |
| TRACE | TRACE | 59 |
| CRANE | CRANE | 128 |
| 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 →
See the solver's route to SMELT → It shows which guesses reduced the candidate pool on each turn.
Solver replay
One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to SMELT.
The solver reaches the answer in 3 guesses.
Common questions
- What was the Wordle answer for March 14, 2022?
- The Wordle answer for March 14, 2022 (puzzle #268) was SMELT.
- What does SMELT mean?
- SMELT: Any small anadromous fish of the family Osmeridae, found in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and in lakes in North America and northern part of Europe.
- Why was Wordle #268 tricky?
- SMELT is rated tricky for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: uncommon in general English, only one vowel.