Wordle is destroying streaks this week as May 14's answer is even more devious than yesterday's — but for a totally different reason

Wordle is not letting up with players this week. The daily puzzle game has served up a vicious one-two punch with another hard answer after yesterday's doozy.

If you haven't checked it yet, you're likely going to want today's Wordle hint to keep your streak intact this week.

Yesterday's answer — which was the uncommon "dowdy" — took the average player 4.4 moves in easy mode, or 4.3 if playing by hard rules. But according to the NYT's WordleBot, May 15's answer is even trickier. The average player will complete Wordle #1,790 in 5.2 moves in easy mode, or 5.1 if playing by hard rules. Talk about a one-two punch!

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Just like yesterday, I'm going to dive into why it's a tough answer below, and I'll also reveal the actual answer below the spoiler warning. If you haven't played yet, good luck!

What makes today's Wordle answer difficult?

Ok, so the first reason that today's Wordle answer is so difficult is not that the letters themselves are hard to guess — it's because there are a lot of words following the same structure. In fact, three of the most common Wordle letters are contained in today's answer and there are no repeated characters.

Sounds easy, right? But the problem is that there are a lot of words that contain these letters in this particular order. Our resident Wordle expert got the correct order on his third attempt, and there were 78 possibilities left to guess.

The sheer density of word options is the biggest hurdle to overcome today. Even if you aced the first, second, fourth, and fifth letters early, you will still have found yourself guessing through a long list of possibilities.

Next, although the answer contains three of the most common Wordle letters, there are a couple of consonants locked in that are much less common. In fact, one of them is among the rarest letters used in the English language.

Ironically, the actual answer to today's puzzle is another way of saying to hesitate or be undecided. Which feels particularly on-the-nose after yesterday's difficult answer.

Ready to find out what it is? Scroll past the spoiler alert below to see.

May 14's Wordle answer

So, what's the answer to today's challenging Wordle #1,789?

Ok, the answer to today's Wordle is "Waver".

As I said, it's not an uncommon word in the same way as "dowdy" was yesterday, but how many words do you know that include WA_ER? Water, wafer, wager — those are just the first that come to mind.

It's unlikely the consonant "v" is the first on your list, and NYT testers reportedly rated today's answer as "highly challenging," largely because that middle "v" is a "low-probability" slot for most standard starting strategies.

Social media reacts

As you'd expect, a number of players took to social media after Wordle served up yet another difficult puzzle this week.

How did you do? Did today's Wordle end your streak or did you guess it in time? Let us know in the comments below.

And if today's answer has ended your love affair with Wordle, check out our own Tom's Guide games to get your fix there instead.

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More from Tom's Guide

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