The TechRadar headline “Warning: today’s Wordle answer is the fifth hardest ever” referred to Wordle #1,426 on May 15, 2025. The answer was EAGER, which WordleBot users scored an average of 5.5 guesses in the figures reported that day. That made it tied with JAZZY for fifth-hardest in TechRadar writer Marc McLaren’s tracked ranking—not an official all-time ranking. Read the original TechRadar article.
For clarity, the answer listing for October 8, 2026 identifies STREW as Wordle #1,937. That is a separate, later puzzle; EAGER was “today’s answer” only in the 2025 headline. See the October 8, 2026 answer listing.
What “fifth hardest ever” meant
McLaren reported that WordleBot users had an average score of 5.5 for EAGER, based on more than 40,000 submissions by May 15, 2025. He placed it in a tie with JAZZY in a spreadsheet tracking 1,138 games since WordleBot launched in April 2022. The ranking therefore describes McLaren’s tracked set and the reported WordleBot results; it is not a definitive official ranking of every Wordle puzzle. TechRadar’s account of the score and tracking.
In the table presented in the article, PARER led with a 6.3 average, followed by MUMMY at 5.8, CORER at 5.7, ROWER at 5.6, and JAZZY and EAGER tied at 5.5. The next entries, FOYER, RIPER, JOKER and JOLLY, each averaged 5.4. These are the article’s reported averages, not scores that should be treated as permanent measurements.
#1 Best Overall
Why EAGER caused so much trouble
McLaren’s explanation focused on the crowded set of plausible words ending in ER. Once a player had a pattern resembling -A-ER, alternatives such as PAGER, WAGER and LAGER could come to mind, while EAGER’s repeated E was easier to miss. Repeated letters can be particularly awkward when a player is reluctant to spend a guess testing a letter already seen.
The scale of the ending helps put that explanation in context. McLaren said 141 of the original 2,309 solution words ended in ER. In his tracked list, 28 games had averages of at least 5.0; 13 of those answers ended in ER. These figures illustrate the pattern in his account, but they do not establish that every ER-ending answer is unusually hard. See the article’s figures and ranking table.
Rank #2
“The problem with ER words is simply that there are so many of them.”
That is McLaren’s summary of the candidate problem, not the result of a controlled study of how all players solve Wordle. Read his explanation and solving example.
McLaren’s approach to narrowing the candidates
Rather than try one near-identical answer after another, McLaren described using a guess to gather information. In his example, after a likely -A-ER pattern emerged, he played MAGIC to test several letters and reduce the remaining options. The point was to use a turn to distinguish among candidates instead of guessing blindly.
That kind of exploratory guess may be restricted in Hard Mode, depending on the revealed letters and the rules in effect: if the mode requires reusing green letters, a guess that does not include them may be unavailable. McLaren’s example is a strategy he described, not a universally optimal method or a tested guarantee of success.
Rank #4
Keep the dates and rankings straight
- May 15, 2025: the TechRadar headline’s “today” was Wordle #1,426, EAGER.
- Historical difficulty claim: EAGER’s reported average was 5.5, tied with JAZZY in McLaren’s tracked ranking.
- October 8, 2026: an answer listing identifies STREW as Wordle #1,937; it is not the answer referenced in the 2025 story.
Current answer listings can change as new puzzles arrive, so the date and game number matter whenever a page says “today’s Wordle answer.”
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