The answer to Wordle #574 was

KOALA: A tree-dwelling marsupial, Phascolarctos cinereus, that resembles a small bear with a broad head, large ears and sharp claws, mainly found in eastern Australia.

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: a repeated letter, uncommon letters.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #574 scores 50/100 for solver difficulty (middle of the pack).

50 Possible answers after CRANE
11 Possible answers after SLATE
289 Possible answers after ADIEU
3 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 #574, measured

This section compares KOALA'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

50/100

This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, KOALA measured harder for the solver than about 50% of all 1,906 recorded answers to date. Its rating is middle of the pack. It repeats A; 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

SLATE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 11 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, ADIEU left 289 candidates, about 26 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 KOALA, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
SLATE SLATE 11
STARE STARE 38
CRANE CRANE 50
TRACE TRACE 51
SALET SALET 69
AUDIO AUDIO 78
RAISE RAISE 96
TARSE TARSE 101
ARISE ARISE 159
ADIEU ADIEU 289

“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 KOALA.

The solver reaches the answer in 3 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for January 14, 2023?
The Wordle answer for January 14, 2023 (puzzle #574) was KOALA.
What does KOALA mean?
KOALA: A tree-dwelling marsupial, Phascolarctos cinereus, that resembles a small bear with a broad head, large ears and sharp claws, mainly found in eastern Australia.
Why was Wordle #574 tricky?
KOALA is rated tricky for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: a repeated letter, uncommon letters.

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