You know that sinking feeling when you hit guess five and the grid is still mostly gray? It’s basically a rite of passage at this point. 2024 was a brutal year for Wordle streaks. We aren't talking about "oh, that's a slightly tricky word" kind of hard. We’re talking about "I'm deleting this app forever" hard.
The hardest to solve answer in Wordle in 2024 wasn't some obscure 18th-century botany term. Honestly, it was a word you probably use once a week. The culprit? CORER.
On October 15, 2024, the New York Times unleashed Wordle #1214. The stats from WordleBot were a total bloodbath. The average score for that day was a staggering 5.9. Keep in mind, the game only gives you six tries. When the average is nearly six, it means about half of the world just didn't make it to the finish line. It was a massacre of green squares.
Why CORER was a total nightmare
You’d think a word with C, O, R, and E would be easy. Those are top-tier letters. But Wordle is a game of traps, and CORER is the ultimate "sinkhole" word. If you got the "O-R-E-R" part early, you were basically doomed.
Think about the possibilities. BORER. SORER. POKER. LONER. GONER.
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If you were playing on Hard Mode, you were trapped. You had to keep guessing words that fit that pattern, and there are way more than six options. It’s like being in a room with ten doors and only one isn't a cliff. You just keep opening doors until you fall.
The WordleBot data showed that a massive 44% of players failed to solve it within the limit. That's a huge number. Most days, the failure rate is less than 5%. CORER broke the internet because it felt unfair. It’s a word that describes a kitchen tool, sure, but nobody actually says "pass me the corer" unless they are in a Williams-Sonoma catalog.
The other 2024 words that broke our streaks
While CORER took the crown for the highest failure rate, it wasn't the only word that made people throw their phones across the room. We saw a series of puzzles in the spring and autumn that were statistically significant outliers.
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- JOLLY (April 21): This one was a beast. It had an average score of 5.6. Why? Double letters are always a pain, but starting with a J is even worse. Most people don't guess J until they've exhausted everything else. Plus, the "OLLY" ending has its own trap: HOLLY, FOLLY, DOLLY, GOLLY.
- ROVER (April 23): Just two days after JOLLY, the NYT gave us this. It was another "O-V-E-R" trap. If you didn't get that R at the start quickly, you were guessing COVER, LOVER, HOVER, and MOVER. It felt like the puzzle creators were trolling us that week.
- DECAL (May 5): This word had a weird regional spike in difficulty. According to Google Trends, searches for "Wordle hint" peaked massively on this day. It’s not a "trap" word in the way CORER is, but the placement of the letters is just... awkward. People don't think of D-E-C together as much as they do other combinations.
- MOMMY (October 9): Triple letters. That’s it. That’s the reason. Having three of the same letter (M) is so rare in the Wordle dictionary—it's only happened about 20 times in the history of the game—that most people’s brains just refuse to consider it until guess six.
The math of the failure
Let's get technical for a second. The reason CORER beat out something like MOMMY or VYING (another 2024 toughie) is because of the letter frequency and the "neighborhood" of the word.
In linguistics, we call these "high-density neighborhoods." If a word has many neighbors (words that differ by only one letter), the difficulty spikes exponentially. CORER has a neighborhood that looks like a crowded subway car. VYING (December 12) was hard because people don't like the letter V or the "Y" in the middle, but it didn't have many neighbors. If you found the "Y-I-N-G," you pretty much had it. With CORER, finding the "O-R-E-R" was actually your downfall.
How to survive the next CORER
If 2024 taught us anything, it's that the "trap" is the biggest threat to your streak. If you see yourself entering a "O-R-E-R" or "A-T-C-H" or "I-G-H-T" situation, you have to change your strategy immediately.
Stop guessing the answer.
Seriously. If it's guess three and you know the word ends in "O-R-E-R," don't guess BORER. Instead, guess a word that uses as many of the possible starting letters as possible. If you guess CLASP, you’re checking for C (CORER), L (LONER), S (SORER), and P (POKER) all at once. You sacrifice a turn to guarantee the win.
This is where Hard Mode players get into trouble. They aren't allowed to do that. They have to use the letters they've found. If you play on Hard Mode, you are essentially agreeing to let the "neighborhood" traps kill you once or twice a year. It’s a brave way to live, but it’s how streaks go to die.
Actionable steps for your Wordle game
Look, the game is getting harder because the "easy" words are mostly gone. The NYT has already used up common words like HOUSE, TRAIN, and PLATE. We are moving into the era of the weird, the doubled, and the trapped.
- Ditch the "best" start word: People love ADIEU or STARE. They’re fine, but they often lead you straight into traps. Try rotating your starters to avoid getting stuck in the same mental ruts.
- Learn the common traps: Memorize the bad neighborhoods. The "O-U-N-D" group (found, mound, round, sound, wound) and the "I-G-H-T" group (might, light, tight, fight, sight) are streak-killers.
- The "Burner" Move: On turn 4, if you are in a trap, use a word that tests 4-5 new letters, even if it ignores the ones you already know are green. It’s the only way to play defensively.
- Watch the J, X, and Z: In 2024, words like BOXER and JOLLY proved that we are too scared of the rare letters. Don't wait until guess six to try a J.
2024 was a year of "Wait, is that even a word?" and "Are you kidding me, NYT?" But that's why we play. If every word was APPLE, we’d have stopped a long time ago. The frustration of a word like CORER is exactly what makes the next day's "Solved in 3" feel so good.
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Keep your eyes on the patterns, stay out of the neighborhoods, and maybe keep a paring knife—or a corer—in your kitchen just to remind yourself who the boss is.
Next steps for your Wordle strategy:
Check your personal Wordle statistics. Look at your "5" and "6" guess counts. If they are higher than your "3"s, you are likely falling into the neighborhood traps mentioned above. Practice using "burner" words on a Wordle archive site to see how it preserves your streak during high-difficulty puzzles.