Wordle's Worst Days
See also:
A list by @Dez in Stumptown with a little help from his friends ;)
Note:
- The X-out rate used to sort these bad days is the default mode players' rate, per WordleBot data.
- All figures below are the percent of players that failed to solve, i.e. X'ed out (some linked discussions use the success rate).
- As always,
*
indicates hard mode when it's not spelled out
CONTENTS:
Over 50%
- 59% #454
PARER
- 16 Sep 2022 - 59%*
Over 40%
- 50% #1426
EAGER
- 15 May 2025 - 46%* - 44% #1214
CORER
- 15 Oct 2024 - 44%*
Over 30%
- 37% #1310
ROWER
- 19 Jan 2025 - 37%* - 36% #1497
GOFER
- 25 Jul 2025 - 37%*
Over 20%
- 30% #1039
ROVER
- 23 Apr 2024 - 29%* - 29% #675
JOKER
- 25 Apr 2023 - 30%* - 29% #1037
JOLLY
- 21 Apr 2024 - 29%* - 28% #1273
BOXER
- 13 Dec 2024 - 28%* - 27% #1065
HITCH
- 19 May 2024 - 23%* - 25% #613
RIPER
- 22 Feb 2023 - 25%* - 24% #491
MUMMY
- 23 Oct 2022 - 21%* - 23% #712
JAZZY
- 01 Jun 2023 - 19%* - 22% #668
HOUND
- 18 Apr 2023 - 24%* - 22% #1482
JUMPY
- 10 Jul 2025 - 18%* - 21% #1500
SAVVY
- 28 Jul 2025 - 18%*
Other bad days
- 20% #555
JUDGE
- 26 Dec 2022 - 18%* - 20% #1208
MOMMY
- 09 Oct 2024 - 16%* - 20% #1300
WAFER
- 09 Jan 2025 - 17%*
WordleBot recaps
Recaps are available only for dates after #723 12 Jun 2023. (work in progress, list is incomplete)
- #1039 30%
ROVER
- 23 Apr 2024 Recap - #1214 44%
CORER
- 15 Oct 2024 Recap - #1273 28%
BOXER
- 13 Dec 2024 Recap - #1300 20%
WAFER
- 09 Jan 2025 Recap - #1310 37%
ROWER
- 19 Jan 2025 Recap - #1482 22%
JUMPY
- 10 Jul 2025 Recap - #1497 36%
GOFER
- 25 Jul 2025 Recap - #1500 21%
SAVVY
- 28 Jul 2025 Recap
Bot X-out dates
Only the hard-mode bot is known to fail to solve any games. I believe the Upshot team (Wordlebot authors) have stated that the default-mode bot solves all the known solutions in six or fewer guesses.
- #668
HOUND
- 18 Apr 2023 - #675
JOKER
- 25 Apr 2023 - #1039
ROVER
- 23 April 2024 - #1214
CORER
- 15 Oct 2024 - #1310
ROWER
- 19 Jan 2025 - #1503
FRILL
- 31 Jul 2025
The list of bot X-out dates was seeded from this post, per @Eric B & @KP:
Posts re: bad wipeout days
16 Sep 2022: Wordle Bees thread about #454 PARER
:
23 Oct 2022: Wordle Bees getting creative with #491 MUMMY
:
26 Dec 2022: Comment by Wordle Bees anchorman @Eric B re: #555 JUDGE
:
22 Feb 2023: Wordle Bees on 25% X-out rate for #613 RIPER
:
18 Apr 2023: An elegy for the bot's failure to solve #668 HOUND
:
12 Jan 2025: Discussion of the bad days in general:
19 Jan 2025: Another thread with @Mike and @Eric B about very bad days:
Leftovers from original notes, not cleaned / incorporated above yet...
Another thread 19 Jan '25 with @Mike and @Eric B about very bad days:
- https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/44l9a2
MUMMY, MOMMY, CORER, & HOUND
and PARER of course
#1208 MOMMY got 20% of default moders but only 16% of hard moders.
#668 HOUND got 21.6% of defaulters April 18, 2023
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/crosswords/wordle-review-answer-668.html#commentsContainer
Around 24% of hard moders X’s out per &OO’s comment:
https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3mnomt
Found my hard mode snapshot just now and re-ran the bot for HOUND in both modes:
Avg 4.9* (par 5)
X’d rate: 21.6% default, 24.1% hard mode.
Default mode bot whomped with WHOMP for a 4.
Hard mode bot X’d out: PLATE,CORNS,DOWNY,[MBF]OUND
#675 JOKER April 25, 2023
Just 7 days after HOUND!
Avg 5.6* (par 6)
X’d rate: 28.6% default, 29.7% hard mode.
Apparently @MDNY was doing a ‘J’ challenge. She and @Elana at least got threes on JOKER day!
https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3ms2ed
@Elie Levine’s comment that day suggested JUDGE from Dec 26, 2022 was pretty hard too.
JUDGE looked like about a 20% & 18%* wipeout day from this comment by Wordle Bees anchorman @Eric B:
https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3khgkl
Posted Jan 12, 2025: https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/44gbvd
When we get into the 20% X range as WAFER did this week, it’s not uncommon for someone to post something like “wow, must be a record!”
While 20% X-out days ARE rare, we don’t have to go very far back at all to see these are not the worst of days in Wordleville.
See BOXER at 28% just about a month ago: https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/43smp4
And CORER at 44% a couple months before that: https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/42kcou
20% is a bad day for sure, but you’ve got to have an X-out rate more than double that to get into epic territory.
#723 is when I started the weekly recap, and WordleBot doesn’t give stats for one infamous day a few months before that: #613 RIPER, Feb 22, 2023. The Wordle Bees, over in the hive thread anchored by @Eric B, reported a 25% X-out rate that day: https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3lk7u0
#491 MUMMY had a 24% failure rate for default mode players, a few points better for hard-moders, and came just a little more than a month after PARER, also still in the Wordle-Bee days:
https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3jf5u8
And the worst of all: #454 PARER saw 59% X-out (including the hard mode bot), when the dust finally settled. I don’t have stats saved for that day, which was Sept 16, 2022, but I was just now able to visit bot stats using a screen capture of my archive game just now!
Of course we posted about PARER in the Wordle Bees thread:
https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/3irhbc
One of the reasons that I hope the NYT runs Wordle epochs completely through all solutions, is so that we can compare these worst days from the first epoch to the second, and know that for example once PARER is behind you in a given 6.4 year epoch, you won’t have to face it again until the next cycle!
😁
Cheers! 🍻
Also posted a link here: https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/44gc5p
#1426 EAGER 15 May 2025
Bot: 4,4*
~8am Pacific sample time:
Avg: 5.5, 5.6
%Xed: 50.1, 46.2
Time to make a rentry page out of this?
https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/47i74e
@mah - Times editors don’t reply much (but sometimes… it’s good to keep hope alive ;)
I have some not-very organized notes on the topic; also suggest you may find some discussions below from long-time aficionados.
I believe today is the second worst day on record, after PARER at almost 60% fail rate. CORER at 44% looks like third worst. ROWER 37%, JOKER around 29%, RIPER and MUMMY about 25%, and another handful of bad days around 20%.
It might be time to turn my notes into a rentry page (if I didn’t already, but I don’t think so 🤔 note to self, check the https://rentry.co/wordle-meta-list later ;)
@KimmyAnn noted JOLLY, which I didn’t have previously noted here:
1037 JOLLY 5.4 5,3 29, 29 X
And MOMMY, among the many ~20%
1208 MOMMY 5.0 4,5 20.3, 16.1 X
Her post:
https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/47i8k9
@Documentalista posted this link on EAGER day:
https://www.pcgamer.com/wordles-hardest-word-caused-60-of-players-to-break-their-streaks
https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/47htmj
@DRH and others suggested JAZZY was among the worst in posts on EAGER day.
JAZZY #712 06/01/2023
Avg: 5.4, 5.5
Bot: 5, 5
%Xed (~8a PDT, rounded): 23, 19
%Xed (final): 22.8, 18.6
@Couchpumpkin reminded us of HITCH here:
https://www.nytimes.com/shared/comment/47ikaf
1065 HITCH 5.1 4,5 27, 23 X