With Wordle now well into the mid-400s in of words, it's no surprise that there have been some in the game's run that were genuinely perplexing even to the best players with the most ironclad strategies. Whether they required some specialized knowledge to solve, aren't common nowadays, or are simply comprised of tricky letters, some words have left many players stumped.
From Agora to Wince, Redditors are happy to it which words had them reaching for a dictionary or questioning their sanity. These are the hardest examples that they ed.
Midge (Wordle #399)
Though the tiny flying insects the word refers to are incredibly common, the word Midge turned out to be one that not everyone is familiar with. Redditor p-zilla its that they "had no idea" it was even a word which meant that, despite containing conventional letters and syllables, it proved a real challenge.
Whereas other words have stumped Wordle players by being incredibly specific, Midge is mostly used as a blanket term to refer to more or less any small flying creature. In Scotland, it can refer to a specific species known as the Highland Midge but it's not surprising that people who've never visited wouldn't have come across the word.
Wince (Wordle #217)
Wordle may be one of the best word-based games when it comes to making the player wince after realizing how close they came to guessing the word before running out of attempts, that didn't make the word Wince itself any easier for players. Redditor flacdada was one of its victims.
They say "I got up against the ropes a few days ago with wince which turned out to be hard for me." Despite not using any particularly abnormal letters aside from the "W" at the start, surprisingly few words end in "ince" so it's easy to see why some players overlooked it as a possibility.
Humph (Wordle #003)
Despite having a naturally far smaller player base at such an early point in the game, Humph still managed to cause an online buzz amongst Wordle players after the fact due to being a downright devious word to try and guess. Redditor karlhendrikse summed up the outrage some players felt at the word, saying "I don't care what anyone says, that's not a word."
Though it does appear in prestigious dictionaries like Merriam-Webster, its onomatopoeic nature led many to question whether it should be considered a real word at all. This alone would likely have led to lots of people failing but it was only compounded by that double-H at the start and end of the word.
Aphid (Wordle #397)
Midge wasn't the only insect-related word to stump some Wordle players and Aphid is similarly more of a category than a specific species, referring to small insects that suck the sap from plants. Not only is it a tricky word in of composition, beginning with a vowel and making use of the rare "ph" sound, but the specificity of the word also caused Redditors trouble.
That includes TargetBrief2019 who called it "very hard to guess" and asked, "Who knows that word besides bug nerds?" Whilst green-fingered Redditors were all too familiar with the pests having had to deal with Aphids themselves, many just hadn't ever come across the word in everyday life.
Sower (Wordle #042)
Whilst it makes sense that a person who sows something would be called a sower, it's a conjugation that's very rarely seen in the real world, which is why Redditor Then-Law2937 felt it was one of the trickiest so far. Though the fact it springs from a normal word makes it seem less obviously difficult than a word like Knoll, they felt it was "pretty tough too!"
It's not the easiest word to guess either. Even when the last four letters are known, "Cower" and "Lower" are much more obvious words to guess than Sower and could easily lead to the player running out of guesses before they've figured out the trick.
Tryst (Wordle #398)
As a word that refers to an illicit meeting between lovers, Tryst has an old-fashioned feel that automatically makes its inclusion in games like Wordle a surprise. Redditor ElvenHero feels that even some of the most infamously difficult Wordle words aren't "so bad compared to TRYST" because of this.
What makes the word seem old-fashioned is its archaic spelling, which is also why it's such a hard word to guess. Not only is having the same letter at the start and end of the word something players would never guess under normal circumstances but a "Y" in the middle of the word instead of an "I" just feels strange until the answer is revealed.
Knoll (Wordle #219)
Wordle might be a great casual game for killing time at work but that doesn't mean it doesn't get players' competitive sides out sometimes. Word #219 was one example of this, as its inclusion caused a huge amount of discussion in the Wordle community from players frustrated not to have gotten it because of its obscurity, the troublesome "kn" at the start, and the double letter at the end.
Redditor CybeastID needed all 6 guesses to get it and agreed it was one of the hardest words. They wondered "How many people tried GNOLL at first and got errored because it was invalid." Whereas Knoll refers to a grassy mound, a gnoll is a fantasy creature. Some players likely dismissed this line of thinking after Gnoll didn't work and failed to get the answer because of that.
Truss (Wordle #198)
Whilst it's certainly less commonly used now than it once was, Truss won't be an unfamiliar word to those who work in construction, where it refers to a type of building framework, or those keen on cooking, where it refers to tying up the legs and wings of a bird before cooking. Its multiple meanings weren't enough to stop some people from missing the word including Redditor opobdtfs.
They describe it as "the hardest word for me" and it it's the "only one I've lost," demonstrating that even strong players have trouble with a word that requires some specific contexts to ever come up. It's also likely that the double S at the end only compounded the issue for unfamiliar players.
Agora (Wordle #241)
Wordle went all the way back to ancient Greece when Agora came up as an answer for Wordle #241, a word that refers to a public meeting space and is the root of Agoraphobia. What's odd is that Wordle actually had two answers in this instance, saving some from having to guess a surprisingly historical term.
For those who did have to guess it like Redditor JackChambers1965, it was an extremely difficult one that they say they "struggled with." Double letters are tricky enough when they aren't vowels as in the case of Agora. Thanks to its historical origins, its spelling is just very unlike many other English words which explains why it took many a lot of guesses.
Epoch (Wordle #170)
Whilst for almost every hard word some players will come forward and claim that they didn't have much trouble with it, Reddit was in agreement that Epoch was just a very difficult word to guess. Redditor MamboTB88 echoed a common feeling when they said " I didn’t know EPOCH was a word."
A word that isn't particularly popular nowadays, the Cambridge Dictionary describes an epoch as "a long period of time" and specifically one that included significant events such as the Victorian epoch. Opening on a vowel and ending on a "ch" that's pronounced as a hard syllable, even knowing the word doesn't make it too much easier to guess.
