WARNING: Today’s Wordle response is the fifth hardest ever – so be careful out there

Wordle is a simple game in theory, but sometimes a very difficult game in practice, and today’s puzzle Rams pointing home with power.

According to Wordlebot, the game is useful (albeit Snarky) AI tools, puzzle # 1,426 has an average score of 5.5 from the 40,000 plus people who have used it so far today. At this goal, it is the hardest Wordle puzzle since January and the fifth hardest over time.

A quick browse of Twitter/X tells today’s story with ‘Wordle 1,426 x’ already on top of the platform. And that’s before most players in the US even woke up.

So what is the problem? To answer that I will have to reveal the solution, do not read by this point if you haven’t played yet. Maybe get some tips from my new Wordle Today article if you need them.

Spoilers for today’s Wordle, Game #1,426, Thursday, May 15, 2025 follows.

Fifth hardest ever

** Final Spoiler Alarm **

Right, last chance to stop reading before I reveal the solution.

Today’s answer is eager, so yes, it’s one is -word. No surprise, right?

It’s pretty easy to get a list of the most difficult Wordles ever because Wordlebot detects the average for each game that has been played.

On the other hand, I have stored a list of these average since ‘Bot launched in April 2022, which means I now have a spreadsheet that ranks 1,138 games after difficulties.

By this measure is eagerly the equally fifth hardest ever, behind only pars (Games#454, average score 6.3), mummy (#491, 5.8), Corer (#1214, 5.7) and beets (#1310, 5.6). It’s also level with Jazzy (#712).

Three of these six words end up are, which is probably the most difficult type of game to solve – though I personally have an even more hated Wordle format.

This theme continues as you go down on the list; Of all games with an average of 5.0 or more, of which there have now been 28, a total of 13 have been completed. That’s almost half of the most difficult games ever (obviously).

Swipe to roll horizontal

The hardest Wordle -gangs so far
Game	Answer	Date	Average score	My score
454	Pars	Friday 16. September 2022	6.3	6
491	Mother	Sunday 23 October 2022	5.8	6
1214	Corer	Tuesday, October 15, 2024	5.7	5
1310	Tube	Sunday 19th January 2025	5.6	6
712	Jazzy	Thursday 1 June 2023	5.5	4
1426	EAGER	Thursday 15 May 2025	5.5	4
304	FOYER	Tuesday, April 19, 2022	5.4	4
613	Mother	Wednesday, February 22, 2023	5.4	6
675	Joker	Tuesday, April 25, 2023	5.4	5
1037	Jolly	Sunday April 21, 2024	5.4	5
1273	BOXER	Friday, December 13, 2024	5.3	5
555	JUDGE	Monday 26th December 2022	5.2	4
714	Nurse	Saturday, June 3, 2023	5.2	5
980	Piper	Saturday, February 24, 2024	5.2	4
730	Kazoo	Monday, June 19, 2023	5.1	4
795	Verve	Wednesday 23 August 2023	5.1	5
990	Hunch	Tuesday, March 5, 2024	5.1	5
1065	Hitch	Sunday 19 May 2024	5.1	3
1350	Fuzzy	Friday, February 28, 2025	5.1	5
375	Gawky	Wednesday, June 29, 2022	5	5
749	Cower	Saturday, July 8, 2023	5	5
878	Sassy	Tuesday, November 14, 2023	5	6
1039	Rover	Tuesday, April 23, 2024	5	6
1055	Jerky	Thursday, May 9, 2024	5	4
1208	Mother	Wednesday, October 9, 2024	5	5
1218	FIBER	Saturday 19 October 2024	5	6
1300	Wafer	Thursday, January 9, 2025	5	6
1385	Krill	Friday 4. April 2025	5	4

Why is –Words are so hard to solve?

The problem with is -word is simply that there are so many of them. My analysis of each Wordle response shows that 141 of the game’s 2,309 original solutions end up in are, making it by far the most likely ending.

You may think that this would make it easier to solve because these words are easy to identify – not least because e and r both are very common letters and are therefore played by many people in their starting words.

However, the large number of them can make it really difficult to then narrow the other three letters. And the problem worsens because almost all letters can be displayed in the first three slots.

Not everyone is -word of course is difficult. Laser, for example, had a super-low average of 3.3 back in April 2024 (Games #1038). But that’s because the other three letters were l, A and S – all of which are very common in their own right, and which appear in many of the best Wordle start words.

In contrast, the other letters that are eager are a repeated e, a and G. The fact that E is repeated makes it much harder to identify because people generally do not play letters twice unless they believe there is a strong likelihood that there will be a repeat. To do it early always feels like throwing the chance of getting information.

All of this leads to what I call it many-response problem, where the solution differs only with one letter from several other words. Today, pager, effort and Pils were all alternative answers and may have taken place for people before thinking of repeating it at first.

This leads to the classic Wordle Fail pattern where four or five guesses are missing one or two letters in vertical lines:

Too many choices.#Wordle1426 Wordle 1,426 x/6*⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩🟨🟩⬜🟩🟩May 15, 2025

#Wordle#Wordle1426wordle 1,426 x/6🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩good Morning pic.twitter.com/qxze5gtvlyMay 15, 2025

My tips for how to play these words

I have played every Wordle ever and only lost once, plus my line is now technical at 1,228 – though Nyt’s inability to cope with people playing in different time zones means it officially stands at 63. And yes, it makes me angry.

Either way, hopefully it is not too arrogant of me to suggest that I know a thing or two about how to avoid losing at this game. And the key is not to continue to guess blindly.

This is impossible if, of course, you are playing on a hard state because you are not allowed to omit letters that have already been turned green.

This means that if you found yourself with that -a -er -pattern early, you have only had two letters intervals where you can try to narrow the solution.

In contrast, I was able to play magic on my third guess and exclude some 40 possible answers at once. That left me only four options: Pagerties, efforts, eager and Skre, according to Wordlebot.

I don’t think the last of them is a likely solution in reality and didn’t think about it yourself. In my head I had a choice of three words and three guesses back – so I was now free to guess one of them.

I went with eagerly and was lucky to score a four, but if it had been wrong, I might have another narrowing word next to guaranteeing me a six in the worst case. Not losing my unofficial line is more important to me than getting a high score, normal.

(Image Credit: New York Times)

The other important thing that I did today was to identify is -the pattern as early as possible. My Start Word is randomly chosen these days; I always used to start with staring, but decided to shake things up by changing it daily instead.

This often leads to less than perfect opening swallows for me, and today I had 777 options left after my first dusty. But in this scenario, I always play one is -word next to exclude (or in) this option as soon as I can. Today, this strategy really paid.

So there you have it: Wordle has another post on his most hated list. If you lost your line today, I will be coming. But don’t worry – there are still another 900 Wordles to play, so there’s plenty of time to rebuild it …

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