‘That made me so mad’: The reason why no one is getting today’s Wordle

Warning: Spoilers for Wordle 243 ahead

Laura Hampson
Thursday 17 February 2022 02:58 EST
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Twitter users have taken to the platform to complain about not being able to complete today’s Wordle.

The five-letter, six guesses daily word game has already thrown us a couple of curveballs this week, by having two different answers one day and a word many didn’t know the next, but Wordle 243 appears to have a setback of its own: there are too many possible variations.

The game, which was created by software engineer Josh Wardle, was acquired by The New York Times earlier this month for an undisclosed seven-figure sum. The game moved over to the publisher’s platform last week.

Today, Twitter users have all been saying the same thing — that they haven’t managed to get the correct word in their six attempted guesses. (*spoiler ahead*)

Today’s word is “shake”, but many users have reported getting the letters “S”, “H”, “A” and “E” and have struggled to complete the word due to the amount of variations.

Some variations of this can include: “shape”, “shade”, “share”, “shame”, “shale” and “shave”.

Out of these, “K” is one of the lesser-used consonants, which might explain why people haven’t included it in their top guesses.

“I don’t usually share my #Wordle result but OMG this made me so mad!,” said one user, who got four out of the five letters correct for five of the guesses but didn’t manage to complete today’s game.

Another user added: “Nobody talk to me for 24 hours. I can’t believe this.”

Others said the word caused them to lose their month-long streaks. “Can you believe I broke my streak with this mess?” one user wrote.

A fourth user said it was the “worst Wordle in the history of Wordles”.

The word also defeated one user, who wrote: “Just lost my first ever Wordle! Annoying thing is, I knew what the word was but thought it had already been an answer. Gonna need some time to recover.”

Other users called the Wordle 243 answer “frustrating” and it was down to sheer “dumb luck”.

“What a frustrating answer,” one Twitter user wrote. “Why choose a word where it’s just dumb luck you strike the right letter from multiple options?”

Another added: “My first failure - still three possible options on sixth go. Wrote correct answer and then changed my mind. Going to have a good talk with myself but I will move onwards and upwards…”

Better luck tomorrow, pals. For more Wordle tips, tricks and the best starting words (hint fewer vowels, more consonants), you can read a Wordle-loving linguistics professor’s advice.

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