Think Wordle is hard now? One woman saved it from being a lot tougher

What are you yorping about?

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Wordle’s list of answers so far have included some real doozies. But if you think it’s already walking the line of fiendishly difficult, it could’ve been outright hellish. Luckily for us all, an angel of mercy stepped in. Kinda.

Josh Wardle – self-proclaimed ‘not a game developer’ – took to the stage at GDC to talk about the inception of the brainteaser. Among the tidbits to come out of his talk is the story of how we narrowly avoided a list of nightmare words that verge on nonsense (viaPC Gamer). Some of them don’t even have entries in the online dictionary.

As you can see from the list Wardle shared at the Game Developers Conference, our collective stress levels would’ve been off the charts. The streak-breaking pool of five-letter words includes such gems as eughs, golps, and dawts. I don’t know what they mean, but theysoundlike the noises you’d make if they’d actually made the cut: “eughs, my three-month streak isruined!”

Thankfully, Wardle decided to run the 13,000-strong Wordle answer list past his partner first. She was going through a “hard time” and was looking for a simple, stress-free game to play. So Wardle created an app containing the database of words for her to sift through.

The words would pop up, one at a time, while she was prompted to choose one of three options in response:  “I know,” “I dono,” or “I mayb kno.” And so formed the list of Wordle answers we know and love/hate today.

The game’s difficulty level and answers have sparked innumerable conversations on social media. Words like ‘saute’ and ‘knell’ have reallyrubbed some people the wrong way.

Happily, we have a daily blog full of hints and clues fortoday’s Wordle answer. It’s updated regularly, so if you’ve hit a wall and are running out of guesses, click through for your salvation.

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Shabana has been writing about games for almost a decade now, as well as covering tech, politics, food, and other random tidbits at Gizmodo UK. She’s stepped outside of news every now and then to write game guides, and always appreciates a DM if she’s helped get you out of a pickle. During her time freelancing, you may have spotted her words at VG24/7, GamesRadar, and IGN. She’s also held the position of news editor at Gizmodo UK, T3, and The Sun Online.

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