The answer to Wordle #612 was

RUDDY: Reddish in color, especially of the face, fire, or sky.

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, only one vowel.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #612 scores 53/100 for solver difficulty (middle of the pack).

91 Possible answers after CRANE
229 Possible answers after SLATE
30 Possible answers after ADIEU
3 Words in the _UDDY family
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 #612, measured

This section compares RUDDY'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

53/100

This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, RUDDY measured harder for the solver than about 53% of all 1,906 recorded answers to date. Its rating is middle of the pack. It repeats D; 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

AUDIO left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 9 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, SLATE left 229 candidates, about 25 times as many. SALET and SLATE came back all gray. None of their letters appear in RUDDY.

First-guess feedback each opener would have received against RUDDY, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
AUDIO AUDIO 9
RAISE RAISE 11
ADIEU ADIEU 30
ARISE ARISE 65
TRACE TRACE 66
CRANE CRANE 91
TARSE TARSE 95
STARE STARE 102
SALET SALET 229
SLATE SLATE 229

“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 RUDDY.

The solver reaches the answer in 3 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for February 21, 2023?
The Wordle answer for February 21, 2023 (puzzle #612) was RUDDY.
What does RUDDY mean?
RUDDY: Reddish in color, especially of the face, fire, or sky.
Why was Wordle #612 tricky?
RUDDY is rated tricky for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: a repeated letter, only one vowel.

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