The answer to Wordle #953 was

EMBER: A piece of coal or wood glowing by heat; a hot coal.

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: uncommon in general English, a repeated letter.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #953 scores 99/100 for solver difficulty (hard for the solver).

126 Possible answers after CRANE
170 Possible answers after SLATE
128 Possible answers after ADIEU
5 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 #953, measured

This section compares EMBER'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

99/100

This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, EMBER measured harder for the solver than about 99% of all 1,906 recorded answers to date. Its rating is hard for the solver. It repeats E; the example solver route takes 5 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

ARISE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 102 of the 2,374 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, AUDIO left 193 candidates. AUDIO came back all gray. None of its letters appear in EMBER. 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 EMBER, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
ARISE ARISE 102
RAISE RAISE 104
SALET SALET 108
TARSE TARSE 116
TRACE TRACE 118
STARE STARE 122
CRANE CRANE 126
ADIEU ADIEU 128
SLATE SLATE 170
AUDIO AUDIO 193

“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 EMBER.

The solver reaches the answer in 5 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for January 28, 2024?
The Wordle answer for January 28, 2024 (puzzle #953) was EMBER.
What does EMBER mean?
EMBER: A piece of coal or wood glowing by heat; a hot coal.
Why was Wordle #953 tricky?
EMBER is rated tricky for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: uncommon in general English, a repeated letter.

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