I don’t play Wordle, but I got one of the hardest words in 2024 in just 4 guesses – here’s how

On November 14, 2024By Littum

Wordle has become a daily ritual for many, with players eagerly sharing their streaks and bragging across social media. I’ve never been one to jump on the bandwagon. However, after watching Today’s Wordle Answers (#1,244, Thursday, November 14) trending on X, along with my colleagues talking about losing their streaks, I couldn’t help but be curious and try for myself.

Why not really? To my surprise, I managed to guess what is said to be “one of the hardest words of 2024” in just four tries. And to be honest, there wasn’t much strategy involved. It was just pure luck. I certainly don’t claim to be a Wordle expert, nor do I have any sort of mastery over words, because it certainly not the case.

If you’re stuck or just wondering how I got the answer in four guesses, here’s a breakdown of what I did to get today’s hard word.

How I got word of the day on Wordle – spoiler alert

SPOILERS ahead because I will reveal the answer!

Honestly, my first guess was a fluke – it already gave me two yellow letters. I started with “fly” for no particular reason other than it had regular letters and two vowels.

Once I got the L and A, I decided to take a gamble with an uncommon word that most people probably wouldn’t think of for Wordle. Knowing this answer was going to be difficult, I went for something more daring – “dally” was my second guess. Although it did not introduce any new letters, it confirmed that the L was in the right place and the A was not.

Feeling brave, I pushed the boundaries even further and focused on words with rarer letters, especially V and X. My colleague, Kaycee Hill, a co-author at Tom’s Guide, suggested that using V might be a smart move. We went with “villa” which was actually risky considering the word didn’t have double L’s. But fortunately the guess was worth it, because it confirmed that the word did contains V and that L and A belonged at the end.

Answer for #1,244, Thursday, November 14

(Image credit: Future)

That led me to the answer “bullshit.” It’s not a word many people are familiar with, but I had heard of it before (it’s the fleshy structure that hangs down at the back of your throat). Knowing this gave me quite an advantage and I was able to guess pretty quickly.

Again, I didn’t calculate the odds like a Wordle wizard or use any advanced strategy – it was getting the right combination of letters in the right order at just the right time. I’m certainly not a Wordle champion, but this little win felt like a stroke of luck. In fact, I might start playing Wordle more often just for fun.