Warning: today's Wordle answer is the fifth hardest ever – so be careful out there

Wordle is a simple game in theory but sometimes a very difficult game in practice, and today's puzzle rams that point home with force.

According to WordleBot, the game's helpful (albeit snarky) AI tool, puzzle #1,426 has an average score of 5.5 from the 40,000-plus people who have used it so far today. By that measure it's the hardest Wordle puzzle since January and the fifth hardest of all time.

A quick browse of Twitter/X tells the story of the day, with 'Wordle 1,426 X' trending right at the top of the platform already. And that's before most players in the US have even woken up.

So, what's the problem? To answer that I'll need to reveal the solution, so don't read past this point if you haven't played yet. Maybe get some hints from my NYT Wordle today article if you need them.

SPOILERS FOR TODAY'S WORDLE, GAME #1,426, ON THURSDAY, 15 MAY 2025 will follow.

Fifth hardest ever

**FINAL SPOILER ALERT**

Right, last chance to stop reading before I reveal the solution.

Today's answer is EAGER, so yes it's an ER word. No surprise, right?

It's pretty easy to get a list of the most difficult Wordles ever, because WordleBot records the average for every game that's been played.

In turn, I've kept a list of those averages since the 'Bot launched in April 2022, meaning I now have a spreadsheet ranking 1,138 games by difficulty.

By that measure, EAGER is the equal fifth hardest ever, behind only PARER (game #454, average score 6.3), MUMMY (#491, 5.8), CORER (#1214, 5.7) and ROWER (#1310, 5.6). It's also level with JAZZY (#712).

Three of those six words end in ER, which is probably the most difficult type of game to solve – although personally, I have an even more hated Wordle format.

That theme continues as you go down the list; of all games with a 5.0 average or above, of which there have now been 28, a total of 13 have ended ER. That's almost half of the most difficult games ever (obviously).

Why are ER words so tough to solve?

The problem with ER words is simply that there are so many of them. My analysis of every Wordle answer shows that 141 of the game's 2,309 original solutions end in ER, making it by far the most likely ending.

You might think this would make it easier to solve, because these words are easy to identify – not least because E and R are both very common letters, and therefore played by lots of people in their start word.

However, the sheer number of them can make it really tough to then narrow down the other three letters. And the problem is made worse because almost all letters can appear in those first three slots.

Not all ER words are difficult, of course. LASER, for instance, had a super-low average of 3.3 back in April 2024 (game #1038). But that's because those other three letters were L, A and S – which are all very common in their own right, and which appear in many of the best Wordle start words.

By contrast, the other letters in EAGER are a repeated E, A and G. The fact that the E is repeated makes it a lot harder to identify, because people don't generally play letters twice unless they think there's a strong likelihood that there will be a repeat. Doing it early always feels like throwing away the chance to gain information.

All of that leads to what I call the too-many-answers problem, where the solution only differs by one letter from several other words. Today, PAGER, WAGER and LAGER were all alternative answers, and may have occurred to people before they thought of repeating that E at the start.

This leads to the classic Wordle fail pattern, with four or five guesses missing one or two letters in vertical lines:

My tips for how to play these words

I've played every Wordle ever and only lost once, plus my streak is now technically at 1,228 – although the NYT's inability to cope with people playing in different time zones mean that officially it stands at 63. And yes, that does make me angry.

Anyway, it's hopefully not too arrogant of me to suggest that I know a thing or two about how to avoid losing at this game. And the key is not to keep guessing blindly.

This is impossible if you play on hard mode, of course, because there you're not allowed to leave out letters that have already been turned green.

That means that if you found yourself with that -A-ER pattern early on, you'll have had only two letters spaces remaining in which to try to narrow down the solution.

In contrast, I was able to play MAGIC on my third guess, and rule out some 40 possible answers in one go. That left me with only four options: PAGER, WAGER, EAGER and RAGER, according to WordleBot.

I don't think the last of those is a likely solution in reality, and didn't think of it myself. In my head I had a choice of three words, and three guesses remaining – so I was now free to guess one of them.

I went with EAGER and got lucky to score a four, but if it had been wrong, I might have player another narrowing-down word next to guarantee me a six at worst. Not losing my unofficial streak is more important to me than getting a high score, usually.

The other important thing that I did today was to identify the ER pattern as early as possible. My start word is chosen at random these days; I used to always begin with STARE, but decided to shake things up by changing it daily instead.

This often leads to less-than-perfect opening guesses for me, and today I had 777 options left after my initial DUSTY. But in this scenario I always play an ER word next in order to rule out (or in) that possibility as soon as I can. Today, that strategy really paid off.

So there you have it: Wordle has another entry in its most-hated list. If you lost your streak today, I commiserate. But don't worry – there are still another 900 or so Wordles to play, so there's plenty of time to build it back up again…

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• Wordle is 1000 – these are the 50 hardest games so far
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• I've played all 1,000 Wordles and only lost once — here are my tips