The answer to Wordle #966 was

FRIED: simple past and past participle of fry

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

Word difficulty: Easy

Why it may be easier: five different letters, at least two vowels and none of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.

Compare past puzzle difficulty →

How difficult was it for the solver?

In a replay of past puzzles, Wordle #966 scores 93/100 for solver difficulty (hard for the solver).

22 Possible answers after CRANE
170 Possible answers after SLATE
9 Possible answers after ADIEU
5 Words in the _RIED family
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 #966, measured

This section compares FRIED'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

93/100

This score is a percentile, not an opinion. Under the site's fixed solver settings, FRIED measured harder for the solver than about 93% of all 1,906 recorded answers to date. Its rating is hard for the solver. The example solver route takes 5 turns; CRANE, SLATE and ADIEU leave about 67 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

ADIEU 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 170 candidates, about 19 times as many.

First-guess feedback each opener would have received against FRIED, and how many answer-pool words would still match it
OpenerFirst-guess feedbackAnswers still possible
ADIEU ADIEU 9
ARISE ARISE 9
RAISE RAISE 12
TRACE TRACE 19
CRANE CRANE 22
AUDIO AUDIO 49
SALET SALET 108
TARSE TARSE 116
STARE STARE 122
SLATE SLATE 170

“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 FRIED.

The solver reaches the answer in 5 guesses.

Common questions

What was the Wordle answer for February 10, 2024?
The Wordle answer for February 10, 2024 (puzzle #966) was FRIED.
What does FRIED mean?
FRIED: simple past and past participle of fry
Why was Wordle #966 tricky?
FRIED is rated easy for estimated word difficulty. Why it may be easier: five different letters, at least two vowels and none of Q, Z, X, J, K, V or W.

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