Wordle has been going strong since 2021 – so, naturally, players are gradually running into tougher and more obscure words. If you want to turn up the heat a little bit further, you can also choose to switch to hard mode, where you have to use any confirmed letters in your next guess.
Though simple in concept, many players find the game to be surprisingly tricky even without hard mode, and some days are certainly more challenging than others. Here are some of the toughest words we’ve seen Wordle use so far in 2025, either because of their unusual letter combinations, repeated letters, or their rarity in everyday language.
Kefir
Wednesday, August 13th
Kefir uses K and F in a way that isn’t similar to many other words, and its relatively obscure meaning made it tough for a lot of players to identify. It refers to a beverage made out of fermented cow’s milk.
It scored a 4.8 on the difficulty scale and appeared to be either a hit or a miss among players. Some people, such as Reddit user klaus_reckoning_1, had never heard the word in their lives, while others questioned how it was proving a challenge at all.
Dirge
Friday, April 18th
Although it only scored a 3.6 on the difficulty scale, the word “dirge” appeared to catch a lot of players off guard. Its unusual vowel placement of I before R and the uncommon GE ending made it especially challenging to figure out, but the main thing that likely caused fans to trip up is that it’s quite an infrequent word for people to use, which left a lot of people stuck for ideas.
The word “Dirge” is usually used to describe a song to express grief/lament the dead.
Similarly to kefir, this was the first time many players, like Reddit user rawwwse had even heard of the word dirge. This word happened to be used on Good Friday, which may or may not have been intentional.
Ditty
Friday, February 14th
The word “ditty” stood out because of its doubled T – many players steered towards using the more familiar “ditto”, or other words ending in “-itty,” like “witty” or “bitty,” which made narrowing down the correct word slower, even after a few letters were revealed – it seems like many people on Reddit fell into this trap.
The word “ditty” is an old-fashioned way of referring to a short, catchy song or tune. It was rated a 5.3 out of 6 on Wordle‘s difficulty scale.
Cyber
Sunday, January 5th
The letters in “cyber” create a combination players rarely see, especially with Y in the second position. It was rated on the same level as “ditty” with a difficulty rating of 5.3, but many players are generally inclined to place Y at the end of the word rather than nearer the middle.
While most Wordle players would likely have been very familiar with the word, its unusual structure made it easy to misplace letters during guesses.
Upper
Thursday, January 23rd
Words used in Wordle rarely start with U, and the double P in “upper” often made players second-guess themselves, favoring words like “ulcer” or “under” that don’t have any recurring letters. This was rated a 5.6 out of 6 on the difficulty scale, which may come as a surprise for such a regular word.
Players tend to overestimate the rarity of the word they’re looking for, so even things like “utter” and “udder” were typically used before they arrived at the correct answer.
Jewel
Tuesday, April 1st
“Jewel” posed a challenge for players because it starts with the uncommon J and has W in an unusual middle position. It’s rare to see double letters within a word that aren’t consecutive, but even if you did manage to get this placement correct, the possibility that you would consider the letter W to be in between them is rather small.
This word was rated with a 5.7/6 difficulty rating, which means a large portion of testers were only able to make a correct guess on their final try.
Folio
Thursday, May 22nd
Folio also repeats a vowel, but words with two nonconsecutive Os are generally much less common than those with two Es. On top of that, “folio” isn’t a word a lot of people use outside specific contexts, so it’s not something that would particularly jump out at players. Many recognize it only as a shortened form of portfolio, rather than in its original sense.
Words ending in “io” are few and far between, but most players will have gravitated towards words like “audio,” “radio,” or “ratio” first. Folio was assigned a difficulty rating of 5.6 out of 6 by testers.
Jumpy
Thursday, July 10th
Jumpy is another word that seems like it would be easy to guess on the surface, but came out with a surprising difficulty of 5.4. Words like “bumpy” or “dumpy” usually caught players out before they were able to finally guess the correct word, since, as previously mentioned, the letter J can often be sidelined without much trouble.
Tizzy
Monday, July 21st
Tizzy has a double Z in the middle and ends with Y, which is an extremely hard combination to predict. Z is probably one of the least likely letters players are going to immediately guess, so having it twice in one word is especially cruel. Even if you did predict that there would be a double letter in the middle, words like “tinny” or “tippy” are a lot more common and use more conventional letters.
The word “tizzy” scored a 5.4 on the difficulty scale.
Extol
Thursday, August 21st
Extol is a verb that means to overly praise or glorify, and was a very difficult challenge for Wordle players on August 21st. The word “extol” contains the letters X and L, which are extremely rare to see in starting words. Additionally, “extol” is certainly not a word frequently used in everyday conversation, so it’s not something that players will usually think to guess.
Personally, I actually only managed to guess the word by accident, as I use the letter X as a placeholder when I’m stuck on one or two letters.
This story originally appeared on Screenrant
