Wordle #965 hints & answer for February 9, 2024
· Friday
This page always keeps Wordle #965 for February 9, 2024. Check that number against your game before opening a hint. The answer remains below a separate reveal.
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Hints for Wordle #965
What kind of word
Wiktionary lists it as an adjective, and also as a noun.
What it means
“Rigid; hard to bend; inflexible.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.
Fill the gap
“She convinced the _____ to go to her hotel room, where her henchman was waiting to rob him.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentence selected from Wiktionary, with the answer removed.
Vowels and repeats
One vowel. One letter appears twice.
How it ends
Ends in F.
Reveal the answer and explanation
The answer to Wordle #965 was
STIFF: Rigid; hard to bend; inflexible.
Source: Wiktionary contributors, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected and lightly formatted from Wiktionary; long entries may be shortened.
Why it may be difficult: a repeated letter, only one vowel.
The word rating describes familiarity and letter features. The solver score below measures how a fixed strategy handles the puzzle; an unusual word can still be easy for that strategy.
How difficult was it for the solver?
Solver pressure: 91/100 (hard for the solver). This is a percentile among past puzzles under the same strategy: 0 is easiest and 100 is hardest for the solver.
This compares past puzzles under the same solver settings; it does not measure how players performed. Compare more puzzles →
Wordle #965, measured
This section compares STIFF'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
This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, STIFF measured harder for the solver than about 91% of all 1,952 recorded answers to date. Its rating is hard for the solver. It repeats F; the example solver route takes four 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
STARE left the fewest candidates: its first-guess feedback left 22 of the 2,384 words in the site's working answer pool. At the other end, AUDIO left 275 candidates, about 12 times as many. CRANE came back all gray. None of its letters appear in STIFF. The vowel-heavy probes ADIEU and AUDIO revealed comparatively little here. Vowel coverage helps only when the answer's vowels are still in doubt.
| Opener | First-guess feedback | Answers still possible |
|---|---|---|
| STARE | STARE | 22 |
| SALET | SALET | 26 |
| ARISE | ARISE | 30 |
| RAISE | RAISE | 30 |
| SLATE | SLATE | 39 |
| TARSE | TARSE | 47 |
| ADIEU | ADIEU | 105 |
| TRACE | TRACE | 115 |
| CRANE | CRANE | 274 |
| AUDIO | AUDIO | 275 |
“Answers still possible” counts the words in the site's 2,384-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 →
See the solver's route to STIFF → It shows which guesses reduced the candidate pool on each turn.
Solver replay
One route our solver takes from its usual opening word to STIFF.
The solver reaches the answer in 4 guesses.
Common questions
- What was the Wordle answer for February 9, 2024?
- The Wordle answer for February 9, 2024 (puzzle #965) was STIFF.
- What does STIFF mean?
- STIFF: Rigid; hard to bend; inflexible.
- Why was Wordle #965 tricky?
- STIFF is rated tricky for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be difficult: a repeated letter, only one vowel.