Back when Wordle popularity was at its absolute peaksocial media would be set alight if that day’s Wordle was a doozy. But what actually was the toughest world of 2022?

This’s precisely what gaming site im-a-puzzle attempted to figure out, trawling through data stored in a Twitter API called WordleStats. How does it work? Well, remember when absolutely everyone was posting their Wordle attempts on Twitter? WordleStats has been collecting that data, and calculating difficulty based on the relative success and failure of each puzzle.

So what were the hardest words? According to the numbers they are…

1. PARER
2. FOYER
3. CATCH
4. WATCH
5. MUMMY
6. CATER
7. COYLY
8. TRITE
9. FOUND
10. TACIT

And to be honest? Some of this checks out. A number of them — like FOYER or TACIT — feel like words I’d accidentally spell incorrectly. Others like PARER barely feel like words that actually exist. All of them, outside maybe CATER or FOUND, feel like words that might be difficult to solve using traditional Wordle techniques (loading up on vowels early, for example.)

But we absolutely have to take this study with the provenrbial grain of salt. Especially given that it was based on users posting on Twitter. It’s very possible more people failed on less obvious words that we didn’t post on Twitter. Or that people were more like to post successes if the word was deemed difficult.

It’ll be interesting to see how Wordle plays out in the future. Months after buying the game from its creator, software engineer Josh Wardle, the New York Times has finally assigned a full time editor to manage the Wordle processwhich means new words will be manually chosen, as opposed to being selected at random.

For more Wordle tips and tricks, here’s a roundup of excellent strategies. Plus, New York Times Games has released a new way to play Wordle. If you’re done with Wordle for the day, try these other addicting puzzle games.