Today’s Wordle answer is one of the most difficult so far this year
Every now and then, Wordle throws one of its most difficult type of games at us. And today is one of those days.
In fact, Wordle #749 is one of the hardest so far this year. Harder than BORAX, harder than HOUND, harder than COCOA and KAYAK and MAIZE. Hard enough that #Wordle749 is trending on Twitter and people are losing their streaks.
So what makes it so tough – and how can you make sure you solve a puzzle like today’s without turning to Wordle hints for help?
To explain, I’ll need to discuss the game in detail – which means SPOILERS FOR WORDLE #749, Saturday, 8 July 2023, follow after this point. Don’t read on if you haven’t already played!Just how difficult is today’s Wordle?
There are various ways to judge the difficulty of a Wordle answer, and a couple of them live on Twitter. One sure sign is that ‘Wordle 749 X’ is already trending high on the platform, with a long line of people posting that they’ve lost their streak today.
Another is to look at the Wordle Stats Twitter account, which records the number of people failing each puzzle. However, this doesn’t update until the next day, so we can’t use that to judge Wordle #749.
What we can do is look at WordleBot, the New York Times’ AI helper tool. This samples thousands of games each day and records an average score for each one – and right now, the average is at 5.0.
Yes, 5.0.
I don’t know the average score for every Wordle so far, partly because WordleBot only launched halfway through the game’s life. But I do have about 350 or so listed on a spreadsheet, including all of them so far in 2023. And by that measure, today’s answer is the sixth hardest this year, and the 11th hardest ever.
To put it in context, the overall average is around 4.0 – so 5.0 is significantly more difficult and perilously close to breaching the game’s six-guesses-and-you’re-out rule.
I’ll assume that if you’re still reading, you’ve finished playing, so let’s talk about today’s answer: COWER.
Not too difficult a word, right? Well, the problem is that it ends in ER. Too many options
These kind of Wordles – let’s call them ER games – have a particular problem, which is identified by the repeated cries of ‘Too many options’ from those bemoaning their luck on Twitter.
