If you struggled to solve many of Wordle -Gådders served last month, don’t be too tough against yourself: It was the toughest month in the game’s history.
I have crushed the numbers and by my calculation it left every two months so far in the dust for difficulties with an average score for the 31 matches of 4.22.
According to the daily figures, it is reported by Wordlebot, the game’s AI helper tool that records the average among the many thousands of people playing. On the other hand, I have stored a list of these average since ‘Bot, which was launched in April 2022, which means I now have a spreadsheet that ranks 1,221 games after difficulties.
The bad news is that rather than just being a statistical deviation, the tough race may point the way to Wordle’s near future. My daily Wordle antiquities may well be even more useful from here.
Wordles month from hell
Regular orders will have no doubt about the game’s difficulty last month, with a number of almost impossible words that cause all kinds of problems.
There were e.g. Tizzy with the repeated letter zs and average of 4.9, and poppy with its triple PS and 4.8 scores.
Foist may not look so difficult, but it was a classic example of Wordle’s letter-trap game, where the first letter can be changed to make several other words, in this case Joist, Hoist and Moist; One also came in at 4.8.
Savvy, with its double vs, also hit that score, while 4.7 bales were one of the wildest is play we’ve had recently. Exil (4.6), nervous (4.5) and frill also caused problems, and the fact that Loris (4.2) can be considered easy in this company, pointing to the overall difficulty.
|
Game |
Answer |
Date |
Average score |
My score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1497 |
Gofer |
Friday, July 25, 2025 |
5.6 |
5 |
|
1482 |
Jumpy |
Thursday 10. July 2025 |
5.2 |
5 |
|
1493 |
Tizzy |
Monday, July 21, 2025 |
4.9 |
4 |
|
1475 |
Poppy |
Thursday 3. July 2025 |
4.8 |
6 |
|
1487 |
Foist |
Tuesday, July 15, 2025 |
4.8 |
4 |
|
1500 |
Knowledgeable |
Monday, July 28, 2025 |
4.8 |
4 |
|
1477 |
Bales |
Saturday 5. July 2025 |
4.7 |
4 |
|
1484 |
EXILE |
Saturday, July 12, 2025 |
4.6 |
4 |
|
1488 |
Nervy |
Wednesday, July 16, 2025 |
4.5 |
4 |
|
1503 |
Frill |
Thursday 31 July 2025 |
4.4 |
4 |
But the two worst last month were jumping and goofer – with scores of 5.2 and 5.6 respectively.
Only 21 games in Wordles history have passed the 5.0 mark (with another nine on exactly this score), so getting two in two weeks are things in nightmares.
Jumpy’s problem was that J at first; As my analysis of each Wordle response shows, J is by far the least common letter in the game, so it is rarely easy. The existence of lumpy, dumpy and bumpyness will also have been a factor.
With Gofer, meanwhile, it was the combination of an ER end (the most common in the game) and the non-so-constant letters G and F that caused the problem. Its 5.6 score places it as the equally fourth hardest ever, behind only pars, mummy and corer and level with beets.
If you couldn’t solve any of them – or even all of them – it’s quite understandable; Wordle is a simple game, but it can sometimes be foulically difficult.
Harder than the rest
Wordlebot was first launched in April 2022, a few hundred games into the series, so it is possible that December 2021 or March 2022 or another month was even more difficult. But I doubt it. I have played each Wordle so far and lost only once, and I certainly don’t remember anything like July 2025.
To confirm my lunch, I spoke the average score every day to get the overall average for July, and then repeated the process for each of the other 38 months that I have detailed in.
One thing I found interesting was that July 2025 was not only the most difficult so far – it was the most difficult so far Much.
The total average of 4.22 of the month may not sound so much higher than for October 2024, the next highest on the list of 4.15, but it is statistically significant considering that there is only a 0.04 difference between months #2-7 on the list.
Plus, it’s a huge 0.57 guess harder than the easiest month, December 2023 – which came in at 3.65 – and far higher than the game’s overall average of 3.97.
Hard times come
A remarkable feature of July’s Wordles was that there were five ‘non-Original’ answers among the 31 games.
When Josh Wardle created Wordle, he and his partner compiled a list of 2,315 words that would form the game’s answer list, and then planned them to perform one day for the next six or so years.
The New York Times removed a few of them when it bought Wordle in 2022, and then left the list more or less unchanged for the next year. Then, in March 2023, it gave us guano – the first ‘extra’ solution added to the original pool and the start of a new era for Wordle.
More has followed since then, 17 in total, including such gems as Uvula, Snafu, Primp and Mommy, all of whom have been hard in their own right. But these words have been separated from each other where most months have not seen one or none at all.
There have been exceptions in which June 2023, November 2024 and May 2025 all have two, and January 2025 by three. But getting five in a month, as we did in July, was unprecedented.
And everyone was difficult: Atrria was a 4.1, nervous a 4.5, Loris was 4.2, Tizzy 4.9 and Gofer, huge 5.6. The average across these five matches was a staggering 4.66; These were all real head scrapers.
And the thing is that new will have to continue to add more of these when time goes by. That’s because we’re now over 1,500 Wordles, which means we only have about 800 original games left, with no idea what will happen to the game when this list runs out.
The smart thing for new to do is expand it for as long as possible, which means adding more words. And there is the problem. Wardle’s list already covers many of the most obvious words in five letters in English, so we can expect the majority of the newly added words to be more difficult than average.
So you can forget about classic Wordle start words such as stare, crane and slate that are added – they have all already been and gone. So for Ultra-Everly English words like house, today and below; They have all been past Wordle response too. Instead, you can look forward to more like balsa, kazoo, beauty, squid and taupe; Ordinary words, slang words, words with unusual letters …
August originally continued the July trend, with Banjo and Daunt both coming in at 4.4, but the next few matches were a little easier; Maybe new gave us all a breath. But don’t be surprised if things soon get harder again because this game only goes one way from here. Don’t say you were not warned.
