It is one of the oldest arguments in Wordle: the puzzles used to be fairer, and somewhere along the line the New York Times started making them nasty.
It is also testable. We took every Wordle answer with a recorded date — 992 puzzles from January 2024 to 20 September 2026 — and measured three things that actually make an answer hard. Two of them have not moved at all. One has, and it happens to be the most punishing of the three.
What we measured
"Harder" is a feeling, so it needs to be turned into something countable. We used three properties of the answer itself:
Rare letters. Does the answer contain J, Q, X, Z, V, W or K? Uncommon letters are harder to reach by elimination.
Lookalike traps. How many other Wordle answers differ from it by exactly one letter? This is the mechanism that ends long streaks — you reach four greens and there are still five candidates. SHARE is the worst offender ever recorded, with 13 one-letter neighbors.
Repeated letters. Does the answer use the same letter twice? Players systematically under-guess repeats, because spending a slot on a letter you have already found feels wasteful.
Two of the three have not changed
| Year | Answers | Rare letter | Average lookalikes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 366 | 28.1% | 1.90 |
| 2025 | 365 | 26.0% | 1.83 |
| 2026 (to 20 Sep) | 261 | 30.3% | 1.80 |
Rare letters bounce around between 26% and 30% with no direction to it. Lookalike traps have drifted very slightly down — 1.90 neighbors per answer in 2024 against 1.80 today.
On those two measures, the complaint is simply wrong. Wordle is not reaching for more obscure letters, and it is not setting more four-green traps than it used to.
The one that did change
| Year | Answers with a repeated letter | Share |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | 100 of 366 | 27.3% |
| 2025 | 126 of 365 | 34.5% |
| 2026 (to 20 Sep) | 98 of 261 | 37.5% |
| All 1,892 answers ever | 590 | 31.2% |
In 2024, roughly one answer in four repeated a letter. Today it is closer to three in eight. That is a jump of ten percentage points, and it is not noise: the 2024-to-2026 difference gives p = 0.007, and even 2024 to 2025 alone reaches p = 0.035.
But the shape matters as much as the size. The change happened between 2024 and 2025 and then stopped. The gap from 2025 to 2026 is not statistically meaningful (p = 0.44). This was a step, not a slide — Wordle shifted once and has stayed there for two years.
Test yourself
37.5% — 98 of 261. Most players guess far lower, which is exactly the problem. If you assume repeats are rare, you will keep spending your last two guesses on words with five different letters.
SHARE, with 13 other Wordle answers a single letter away — SHORE, SPARE, STARE, SHAME, SHAPE, SHADE and more. STARE and STORE follow with 11 each. The _ARE and _ORE families are where streaks go to die.
Why it feels worse than ten points
A repeated letter is not just one more difficulty knob. It is the one players are worst equipped for.
When we scored every possible opening word, repeated letters turned out to be the costliest thing you can do in a guess — openers containing one leave 231 possible answers on average against 142 for openers with five different letters. Players learn that lesson early and then over-apply it, avoiding repeats in every guess, not just the first.
So the answer pool moved toward the exact pattern players have trained themselves to avoid. Ten points is enough to notice when it lands on the guess that ends a 400-day streak, and that is what people are reacting to when they say the game got mean.
Drill the pattern that changed
Unlimited puzzles at three difficulty levels - practice spotting repeats without risking your streak. No account needed, completely free.
Play Wordle Unlimited - FreeWhat to do about it
One adjustment, and it is small. Once you have three or four confirmed letters and no obvious answer, test a repeat before you test a new letter. Your instinct will say that is wasteful. In 2024 that instinct was right about three times in four. Today it is right closer to five times in eight.
If you want to drill the pattern, our complete list of double-letter five-letter words is the raw material, and the trickiest double-letter answers covers the ones that catch people most often.
Common questions
Not in general. Across 992 dated answers from 2024 to 2026, rare letters show no trend and lookalike traps have fallen slightly. One measure did change: answers with a repeated letter rose from 27.3% in 2024 to 37.5% in 2026.
Yes. 27.3% of 2024 answers repeated a letter, against 34.5% in 2025 and 37.5% so far in 2026. The all-time average across every answer ever used is 31.2%. The increase is statistically significant (p = 0.007 comparing 2024 with 2026).
Between 2024 and 2025. That shift is significant (p = 0.035), while the 2025-to-2026 change is not (p = 0.44). It looks like a one-off step rather than a year-on-year trend.
By our measure, a word with many one-letter neighbors. SHARE has 13 other answers a single letter away, so reaching four greens still leaves you guessing. STARE and STORE have 11 each.
For the answers that actually broke people this year rather than in aggregate, see every Wordle that broke people in 2026.
Method: 992 answers with recorded dates from January 2024 to 20 September 2026, taken from published Wordle answer archives. Lookalike counts are computed against all 1,892 words that have ever been an answer. 2026 is a partial year, and month-level figures are too small to read individually. Significance uses a two-proportion z-test.