Wordle took the world by storm when it first arrived back in June of 2021. One multi-million dollar acquisition and more than a full year later, the game remains incredibly popular with players all over the world, with millions of people still taking the time to test themselves on a daily basis in the hopes of further improving their Wordle solving streaks.

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A big part of the game's appeal stems from how simple it is, with players able to pick up the rules very quickly with just a little bit of trial and error. However, just because the mechanics of Wordle aren't too tricky to understand doesn't mean that the game is always easy, with some of the most difficult Wordle solutions leaving large sections of the player base frustrated.

Updated December 7, 2022, by Tom Bowen: There's nothing more satisfying than solving a particularly challenging Wordle puzzle, particularly when the word in question is one that doesn't come up all that often in day-to-day life. Putting together an impressively long solving streak is also a satisfying part of the popular word puzzle game, with some people playing daily just to keep their solving streaks alive. Unfortunately, however, these streaks can't last forever, with many falling victim to some of the game's most challenging words. The most difficult Wordle solutions have all claimed their fair share of streaks, leading many players to brand them as the worst Wordle words of all time.

MUMMY (Wordle #491 - October 23, 2022)

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Mummy isn't a particularly complicated word, nor is it all that uncommon, but it definitely isn't a word that is well-suited to Wordle. With three M's, the chances of players stumbling upon this word organically were already pretty low, but the fact that it also includes the least common vowel and is one of those horrible words that ends with a Y made it a real streak-ender of a Wordle.

One of the only saving graces for Mummy was that it came shortly before Halloween, meaning many players may have already had mummies on their minds. What's more, the fact that M is a fairly common letter in Wordle puzzles probably helped a little, as for those who found the first two letters, the chances of arriving at mummy were fairly high.

WOOER (Wordle #78 - September 5, 2021)

WOOER (Wordle #78 - September 5, 2021)

In theory, a word with three vowels in the center should be fairly easy to guess, particularly with one of the remaining two letters being R (the third most common letter in the English language). However, the use of the word "Wooer" in September of 2021 ended up stumping a lot of players, due largely to how rarely it is used in modern English.

Of course, the fact that Wordle #78 began with the letter W didn't help either, nor did the infrequency with which two Os are followed by another vowel. A lot of streaks were broken in September of 2021 as a result, with many players considering "Wooer" to be the very first example of a Wordle word that was just too difficult to guess. Sadly, it was far from the last.

CACAO (Wordle #364 - June 18, 2022)

CACAO (Wordle #364 - June 18, 2022)

Nine months later and Wordle spawned yet another word with a trio of vowels that left a lot of experienced solvers scratching their heads. Like the word "Wooer," "Cacao" is seldom used in modern conversations, making it incredibly difficult for players to guess the word even if they somehow managed to get all three vowels in the correct places.

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Words with two of a particular letter can often be very difficult to guess, particularly when they're not Os or Es. With this in mind, it's easy to see how a word containing two Cs and two As might prove to be too difficult for some Wordle players, so how exactly the team at the New York Times failed to preempt this remains to be seen.

IONIC (Wordle #480 - October 12, 2022)

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The October 12 Wordle is one of those words that most people will probably know thanks to their high school chemistry days, yet also one which will very seldom come up in day-to-day life for all but those who opted to pursue a career involving chemicals. Its triple vowel structure didn't help much either, particularly as two of those vowels are Is.

Granted, there are some fairly common five-letter words with two Is in them such as chili and limit. However, it's not often that a five-letter word begins with an I, and rarer still to find one with vowels in the first two positions. This made it one of the most difficult Wordle words to date, with many players' streaks falling victim to its complex structure.

COYLY (Wordle #408 - August 1, 2022)

COYLY (Wordle #408 - August 1, 2022)

While on the subject of words that contain two or more of the same letter, Wordle #408 was a bit of a doozy. Released at the very beginning of August 2022, its use of not one but two Ys helped to make "Coyly" an incredibly tricky word for a lot of players to guess, as too did the fact that it only contained a single vowel.

Two weeks later and the NYTimes Wordle team was at it again, with the word "Khaki" causing a lot of problems for a lot of players. With the letter K being used even less frequently than Y in the English language, solving the August 14 Wordle was far from simple, though the fact that it had two vowels instead of one did arguably make it a little easier.

ZESTY (Wordle #313 - April 28, 2022)

ZESTY (Wordle #313 - April 28, 2022)

Although the letters X, J, and Q are all equally uncommon, there's something about the letter Z that leads to a lot of players overlooking it when making their Wordle guesses. As a result, Wordle #313 confused an awful lot of solvers when it dropped in April of 2022 and this, in turn, led to an awful lot of ruined streaks.

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It's not that "Zesty" is a word that most people don't know or anything like that, more that the likelihood of players stumbling upon it with their standard guessing strategies is pretty low when all's said and done. Even if players were able to get the middle three letters of the word, most would probably most would still likely have trouble getting from there to "Zesty."

NYMPH (Wordle #281 - March 27, 2022)

NYMPH (Wordle #281 - March 27, 2022)

Considering that most Wordle players choose starting words that aim to eliminate vowels as quickly as possible, it could perhaps be argued that the decision to choose a solution containing no vowels whatsoever was a little cruel. Worse still, "Nymph" uses the somewhat rare PH sound as well as the letter Y, which is the eighth least-used letter in the English alphabet.

The NY Times team would do something similar just a few months later with Wordle #398 and the word "Tryst." With players having already been prepared for the possibility of a solution without any vowels and the letters T, R, and S being three of the eight most commonly used letters, however, the July 22 Wordle proved to be a lot less challenging for most veteran solvers.

REBUS (Wordle #196 - January 1, 2022)

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Most people like to start the year off with a bang, but a difficult Wordle puzzle probably wasn't too high up on most people's to-do lists after a season of celebrations. A Rebus is a type of puzzle in which words are represented by combinations of pictures and letters, such as the word "Ward" being shown as a bunch of army dudes fighting one another and the letter D.

Perhaps had the January 1 puzzle shown a picture of a bus together with the letters RE, more players might have found their way to the right solution. However, the decision to choose such a difficult Wordle word left many players scratching their heads for a good while. Of course, the fact that a lot of them were hungover probably didn't help too much either.

BLOKE (Wordle #250 - February 24, 2022)

BLOKE (Wordle #250 - February 24, 2022)

Though many Americans will no doubt be familiar with the word "Bloke," not all Wordle players were when it was selected to be the solution to the 250th Wordle puzzle. This is because it's an informal word used primarily in British English, meaning that many solvers from outside the UK were left confused when inputting their guesses.

Some may wonder whether the decision to use the word "Bloke" was perhaps the game's developers' way of apologizing to British players for an incident that occurred just a few weeks prior. On February 9, some Brits were left frustrated by the use of the word "Humor," which, unlike in American English, is spelled with a U before the O in British English dictionaries.

KNOLL (Wordle #219 - January 24, 2022)

KNOLL (Wordle #219 - January 24, 2022)

Despite everybody having heard of the infamous grassy knoll, the word "Knoll" is one that's very rarely used in modern-day English. Its use of the KN sound doesn't help make it a particularly easy word to find using standard guessing strategies either, nor does the fact that there are four other five-letter words that end will OLL, including "Droll," "Troll," and "Atoll."

Interestingly, "Atoll" was also selected as a Wordle solution just a few months later and once again caused problems for a lot of players. The May 30 Wordle triggered a wave of frustration right throughout the Wordle community, due both to its unusual structure and the infrequency with which the word crops up in modern-day English.

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