This Is The Most Brutal Wordle Whiff We've Ever Seen

The Wordle craze continues unabated, and while the words presented by the online puzzle game are generally recognizable and common-use words, today's appears to be throwing a lot of people for the loop. Among other things, this has led to the most hilariously sad miss we've ever seen, or perhaps that is even possible to see.

Spoilers for the January 31, 2022 Wordle puzzle follow.

As those who have solved the puzzle know, the solution for today's Wordle is "LIGHT"--a very normal word that everyone has heard of and probably even uses on a daily basis. But that ending construction, "GHT" or "IGHT," are both incredibly common. Assuming you know the last three or even the last four letters, you can still whiff just trying different common words and guessing wrong, like this unfortunate person did:

Ordinarily we'd chalk such an epic and complete miss up to someone cracking a joke, but a look around Wordle Twitter today shows this isn't too uncommon for today's word. Lots of people have reported similar results with multiple misses in a row, some of them managing to just barely snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It would be very easy to waste guesses on some combination of MIGHT, RIGHT, TIGHT, EIGHT, SIGHT, and FIGHT, among others. So it stands to reason that someone out there would be unlucky enough to just whiff all the way through.

As some have pointed out, you could break from this construction and guess a completely different word to get a hit on the missing letter. But that isn't possible in Hard Mode, available through the Options menu, which requires you to use all of your previously hit letters. And even those who don't play on Hard Mode might just play that rule by the honor system.

So assuming you got today's word, consider yourself lucky that you didn't crash and burn in such an incredible fashion. For more on Wordle, check out the best Wordle starter words and other tips, and maybe go practice by trying older Wordle puzzles.