The answer to Wordle #423 was

GRUEL: A thin, watery porridge, formerly eaten primarily by the poor and the ill.

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

Word difficulty: Hard

Why it may be difficult: very uncommon in general English.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #423 scores 27/100 for solver difficulty (easier for the solver).

22 Possible answers after CRANE
63 Possible answers after SLATE
23 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 #423, measured

This section compares GRUEL'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

27/100

This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, GRUEL measured harder for the solver than about 27% of all 1,906 recorded answers to date. Its rating is easier for the solver. 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

TRACE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 19 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, STARE left 122 candidates, about 6 times as many.

First-guess feedback each opener would have received against GRUEL, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
TRACE TRACE 19
ARISE ARISE 22
CRANE CRANE 22
ADIEU ADIEU 23
SALET SALET 44
SLATE SLATE 63
RAISE RAISE 104
AUDIO AUDIO 110
TARSE TARSE 116
STARE STARE 122

“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 GRUEL.

The solver reaches the answer in 4 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for August 16, 2022?
The Wordle answer for August 16, 2022 (puzzle #423) was GRUEL.
What does GRUEL mean?
GRUEL: A thin, watery porridge, formerly eaten primarily by the poor and the ill.
Why was Wordle #423 tricky?
GRUEL is rated hard for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: very uncommon in general English.

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