Wordle isn't giving players an easy ride into the holiday season and if you're a regular player you might want to check out today's Wordle hint before starting.
According to the WordleBot, the average player completes today's puzzle in 4.6 moves in easy mode, or 4.5 if playing by hard rules.
I'll put the answer itself further down this article beneath a spoiler warning so you can look for yourself if you're all out of guesses.
Our in-house Wordle expert checks his progress on every puzzle through the New York Times' WordleBot. The in-game AI helper analyzes the game after you've played it and does the same for every other player. That gives you an idea of how tough people are finding any given puzzle, and Wordle #1,644 (December 19) is, in a word, brutal. In fact, our expert said he felt like this was one of the toughest answers of 2025.
According to the WordleBot, the average player completes today's puzzle in 4.6 moves in easy mode, or 4.5 if playing by hard rules. That's not a lot of margin for error but it's also not the highest we've ever seen. Puzzle #454, all the way back in September 2022 has a score of 6.3.
So, what makes today's answer so difficult? To discuss it, we're going to need to reveal the answer — so stop reading now if you haven't done it yet and don't want it spoiled...
Spoiler alert: Today's answer below
I'm going to assume you heeded the warning ahead and know that today's puzzle's answer is "myrrh."
That's right, it's a Christmas-themed Wordle today! But what makes it so difficult? It could be the fact that myrrh isn't exactly a word we use on a daily basis. In addition, it doesn't feature any of the five vowels and just one of the ten most common Wordle letters.
While our own Wordle expert got it in three guesses (he eliminated all possible vowels in two guesses), that's not going to be the case for everyone.
If you're not familiar with the Christmas story, myrrh was one of the gifts presented to baby Jesus from the three wise men. It's a sap-like resin produced from the commiphora plant and, like frankincense, was widely used in ancient cultures as both a medicine and a form of incense.
Merriam-Webster defines it as: "a yellowish-brown to reddish-brown aromatic gum resin with a bitter slightly pungent taste obtained from a tree (especially Commiphora myrrha of the family Burseraceae) of eastern Africa and Arabia."
How the Tom's Guide team fared
I polled our regular Wordle players to get a sense of how they found today's puzzle.
"That has to be the hardest Wordle I've done ever, the lack of any vowels really threw me off," said our senior reviews writer Nikita Achanta. "When I'm stuck, my tactic is to just repeat letters and hopefully a lightbulb will go ding in my head. The only reason I knew the answer is because my partner owns an essential oil with this thing in it. At least it saved my 443 day streak."
Phones writer Josh Render had the same strategy: "The only insight is to not be afraid to use words with some letters you already have as a guess just to get some more potential greens and yellows. I only got it by putting down "merry", despite having a word with an "e" as a guess already."
Meanwhile our Homes editor, Millie Fender, picked up today's answer in three guesses: "I figured out in my second guess that the last letter had to be an H, which really narrowed down my options," she said. "But then, because I am a very wise (wo)man, I remembered one five-letter word with a seasonal twist that fit the bill.
"Sometimes being hemmed in with an impossible letter placement can force you to get creative, and I managed to get it in three!"
Erin Bashford, senior reviews writer, explained: "Today's Wordle has a killer combo of zero vowels and a double consonant. After my second guess, I knew there were no vowels, so I presumed the vowel sound would be replaced with a Y.
"Unfortunately, the only word that came to mind was the 6-letter "RHTHYM". I jiggled around rhythm's letters and eventually came up with today's correct answer on guess 4."
Meanwhile, our senior fitness writer Nick Harris-Fry also managed to guess the answer: "Having ruled out all the vowels after three rounds, and only guessed two correct letters in the wrong place, I had to think long and hard.
"The answer eventually came like a Christmas gift, and I felt like a very wise man."
How did you get on with today's Wordle answer? Did you keep your streak? Let us know in the comments below.
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