The answer to Wordle #429 was

MERIT: A claim to commendation or a reward.

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

Word difficulty: Easy

Why it may be easier: five different letters, at least two vowels and none of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #429 scores 63/100 for solver difficulty (middle of the pack).

126 Possible answers after CRANE
73 Possible answers after SLATE
50 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 #429, measured

This section compares MERIT'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

63/100

This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, MERIT measured harder for the solver than about 63% of all 1,907 recorded answers to date. Its rating is middle of the pack. 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

TARSE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 4 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, CRANE left 126 candidates, about 32 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 MERIT, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
TARSE TARSE 4
SALET SALET 22
RAISE RAISE 27
TRACE TRACE 29
STARE STARE 30
AUDIO AUDIO 33
ARISE ARISE 36
ADIEU ADIEU 50
SLATE SLATE 73
CRANE CRANE 126

“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 MERIT.

The solver reaches the answer in 4 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for August 22, 2022?
The Wordle answer for August 22, 2022 (puzzle #429) was MERIT.
What does MERIT mean?
MERIT: A claim to commendation or a reward.
Why was Wordle #429 tricky?
MERIT is rated easy for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be easier: five different letters, at least two vowels and none of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.

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