Wordle Delivers Back-to-Back Heartbreakers

Wordle is not playing around this weekend. Just a day after Wordle posted one of its hardest puzzles yet, players around the world are once again searching through their vocabulary in search of the right answer. Today's Wordle is another headscratcher and provides another tough challenge for players of the popular word-guessing game. We'll dig into what makes today's Wordle puzzle so tricky later in the article, for those looking for some hints or clues. However, if you haven't done the puzzle yet, you may not want to scroll to the bottom of the article as we'll eventually discuss the answer.

For those who somehow have missed out on the Wordle craze so far, the rules of the game are simple: players have six tries to guess a five letter word. Players receive clues based on which letters their guess shares with the correct word. A letter shaded in yellow means that letter also appears in the correct word, but in a different letter location. A letter shaded in green means that letter appears in the same spot in the correct word.

On average, it takes Wordle players about 4 tries to correctly guess a daily puzzle, although a few puzzles can be significantly trickier. As we noted before, words that end with the same sequence of four letters can be problematic, especially if it takes players a few guesses to get that word sequence. That's what happened earlier this month with "WATCH," as there are several other 5-letter words that also end with "ATCH." 

So, what makes today's Wordle – aka Wordle 281 – so tricky? Like yesterday's puzzle, today's word is an uncommon word made up mostly of "uncommon" letters. Three of the solution's five letters are among the least used half of letters in the English alphabet, which means that using words with common letters might not work out well. There are also a couple of words that share the answer's seemingly unique three-letter ending, and one that surprisingly shares the final four letters with the correct answer.

One other thing tripping players up (and this is a big hint as to what the word is, so stop reading if you don't want a big hint for today. puzzle) is that the word doesn't have a traditional vowel. This, of course, makes the correct answer significantly easier to figure out, especially if you're able to eliminate a number of common letters with your first few guesses.

Still stumped on today's Wordle puzzle? The answer to Wordle 281 is...NYMPH.

Let us know if you got today's Wordle puzzle in the comment section, and if you managed to match our score of getting it in three tries!