The answer to Wordle #836 was

WHILE: An uncertain duration of time, a period of time.

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

Word difficulty: Moderate

Why it may be difficult: uncommon letters.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #836 scores 53/100 for solver difficulty (middle of the pack).

105 Possible answers after CRANE
21 Possible answers after SLATE
53 Possible answers after ADIEU
3 Words in the WH_LE family
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 #836, measured

This section compares WHILE'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, WHILE measured harder for the solver than about 53% 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 about 59.7 possible answers.

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 21 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, AUDIO left 274 candidates, about 13 times as many.

First-guess feedback each opener would have received against WHILE, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
SLATE SLATE 21
ARISE ARISE 24
RAISE RAISE 24
SALET SALET 50
ADIEU ADIEU 53
STARE STARE 90
TARSE TARSE 90
CRANE CRANE 105
TRACE TRACE 108
AUDIO AUDIO 274

“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 WHILE.

The solver reaches the answer in 4 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for October 3, 2023?
The Wordle answer for October 3, 2023 (puzzle #836) was WHILE.
What does WHILE mean?
WHILE: An uncertain duration of time, a period of time.
Why was Wordle #836 tricky?
WHILE is rated moderate for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: uncommon letters.

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