The answer to Wordle #401 was

ELOPE: Of a married or engaged person, to run away from home with a paramour.

Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.

Word difficulty: Tricky

Why it may be difficult: uncommon in general English, a repeated letter.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #401 scores 80/100 for solver difficulty (tricky).

105 Possible answers after CRANE
13 Possible answers after SLATE
199 Possible answers after ADIEU
4 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 #401, measured

This section compares ELOPE'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

80/100

This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, ELOPE measured harder for the solver than about 80% of all 1,907 recorded answers to date. Its rating is tricky. It repeats E; the example solver route takes four turns.

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

SLATE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 13 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, AUDIO left 286 candidates, about 22 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.

First-guess feedback each opener would have received against ELOPE, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
SLATE SLATE 13
SALET SALET 50
ARISE ARISE 62
RAISE RAISE 62
STARE STARE 90
TARSE TARSE 90
CRANE CRANE 105
TRACE TRACE 108
ADIEU ADIEU 199
AUDIO AUDIO 286

“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 ELOPE.

The solver reaches the answer in 4 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for July 25, 2022?
The Wordle answer for July 25, 2022 (puzzle #401) was ELOPE.
What does ELOPE mean?
ELOPE: Of a married or engaged person, to run away from home with a paramour.
Why was Wordle #401 tricky?
ELOPE is rated tricky for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: uncommon in general English, a repeated letter.

Keep solving and playing