‘AGED’: Two Years of Wordle
Has the word game stood the test of time?
This post definitely didn’t come about due to one team member’s commitment to the game – including an incredibly impressive streak that he’s too humble to share…
In case you didn’t know, Wordle began as a game between partners, but was then released publicly in October 2021. There were minimal mentions of it until December, when the sharing option was added.
That’s where we come in! Taking a look at the (once) viral word guessing game is Senior Analyst, David.
We looked at players who shared their Wordle performance on Twitter worldwide, between November 2021 and October 2023 – that’s 2 years of Wordle data to get our teeth into!
As we’re only looking at players who actually shared their results, this is only a subset of people who actually played. Although, it’s a pretty good measure for how much Wordle has been talked about, and for later, what Wordle words were wacky and wicked!
It wasn’t long before mentions of Wordle peaked on 3rd February 2022, where 372 thousand players shared their results to the world (if you’re curious, the answer on that day was SHARD).
Fun fact! Wordle was the top Google Search Trend globally in 2022. (1)
After February 2022, Wordle streaks began to end, and by October that year, less than 30,000 people were playing. In 2023 so far, the average number of players per day is 18,000, with October seeing just under 14,000.
Guesses
Let’s get into the more interesting stats – how good is everyone at Wordle?
On average, most people (almost a third) find the correct answer on their 4th guess, and 78% of people get it within 3 to 5 guesses, making that the sweet spot for solving.
Fun fact! It takes a player 4.15 guesses on average to find the solution.*
We’ve seen the average number of guesses change over time too – albeit not by much (a gradient of -0.000242). Just comparing last year to this year, the average number of guesses to find the solution dropped from 4.17 to 4.08. That’s a 2% improvement! So, we can at least say that people are, in general, getting better at Wordle.
Just 1% of 1st guesses were actually the correct answer, and the day which this happened the most was on 30th August 2023, in which the answer was AUDIO. 18% of players got that on their first guess. Four vowels makes it a good starting word, and according to the New York Times themselves, it’s the second most common starting word (2), so no wonder it was this word!
If you’re curious, IRATE, another common starting word, was the answer on 4th July 2023, when 8% of players got it on their first try.
Fun fact! The Wordle answer that most people got on their third guess was, ironically and iconically, THIRD (on 20th December 2022).
Based on average guesses, the easiest Wordle answers were AUDIO, HEART, and CHART.
On the other end of the spectrum are the words that people didn’t get. PARER, JAZZY, and MUMMY were the words that people got in the most guesses, all over 5 on average. In fact, PARER was also the word that people struggled the most with, with 35% of players that day not getting it at all. The next most-missed word was CATCH, where 18% of players missed it. That makes PARER solidly the hardest word, and 16th September 2022 being bad days for a lot of people. And that makes sense too; an ER ending with another R is just a nightmare for Wordle players.
Fun fact! 5% of Wordle answers end in ER, making it twice as common as the next most frequent 2-letter ending. For single letters, 20% end in E, with Y and T both at 13%.
Now let’s look at what letters were friends and which were fiends…
On the higher end of the spectrum is the letter J, in which players solve Wordles with this letter in 4.64 guesses on average. This is followed by Z and X. But let’s be honest, no one is surprised by these.
On the other end, we don’t see the common letters like the vowels, but rather T, P, and H, in which players solve in closer to 4 guesses.
Fun fact! Players fail 1.3x more if the solution has a repeated letter, and almost 3x more if the solution has the same letter 3 times!
And that’s it!
If you’re curious, it takes me 4.07 guesses on average to find the solution, which is 2% better than the global average. Take that, internet!
*For average guess calculations, those who did not correctly guess the Wordle answer (X/6) were calculated as getting it in 7 guesses.