Wordle players nationwide stumped by ‘dowel,’ ‘fugue,’ ‘gnome,’ among others in 2025

Players of the word puzzle game Wordle had trouble with “dowel,” “fugue,” and several other words in 2025, with 44.6 million Google searches made for hints.

The game and its New York Times-owned app give players six guesses of what the five-letter word of the day could be. Players go to Google and to sites like Unscramblerer for help figuring out what the daily words could be; the latter site released the results of 2025’s hardest words by state this week.

By analyzing Google searches, Unscramblerer found that “dowel,” the word of the day for May 11, was the hardest to solve. It ranked as the hardest in 13 states: Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

“Fugue,” the word for Nov. 9, was the second-hardest for Wordle players and ranked as the hardest in 10 states: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Virginia and West Virginia.

“Gnome,” the word for July 13, was the third-hardest. It ranked as the most difficult word of the year in Washington, D.C., and seven states: Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New Mexico.

“Whole,” the Wordle word for July 27, came in fourth and ranked as the hardest word in six states: California, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York and Tennessee.

“Rough,” the fifth-hardest Wordle word of 2025 and the word for June 1, ranked as toughest in four more states: Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina and Utah.

After that, “lousy” caused the lousiest results in Colorado, Connecticut and Delaware, “minty” proved the most difficult in Louisiana and Rhode Island, “patch” was the hardest in Montana and Texas, “trove” was the hardest in Hawaii, “otter” was the toughest in Mississippi, and “lumpy” proved the most difficult for Wyoming.

Despite making 44.6 million searches for hints, Wordle players still want to solve each day’s puzzle themselves rather than outright looking for the answer and cheating, Unscramblerer indicated.

“The gap between players who want to cheat and those who simply need a hint to solve Wordle has widened from 1 vs 10 to 1 vs 13. Last year solvers searched 13 times more for ’Wordle hint’ than ’Wordle solver’. Americans love to solve the puzzle themselves, even at the risk of breaking a winning streak,” an Unscramblerer spokesperson said.