The Hardest 4-Letter Words to Guess (Ranked from 517 Answers)
2026-10-26 · Tile Guess
Four letters sounds like the easy mode. Fewer squares, and the words are ones everybody knows: BALL, BEAR, GOOD. Then you find three letters on the second guess and spend the next four failing to find the last one. This post counts all 517 four-letter answers in WordMaster's Easy Mode to show why.
One note first: the Easy Mode list grew from 191 to 517 words on October 26. The old list only had words starting with A to G; it now runs A to Z. Every number below is for the new list.
Difficulty is scored on the same three things as the six-letter post: how common the letters are, whether a letter repeats, and whether there is only one vowel. Here are the 15 that score worst.
The 15 hardest
| # | Word | Why it is hard |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | JAZZ | Z twice, plus J. J is in 5 of the 517 answers and Z in 8. |
| 2 | HIGH | H twice and I as the only vowel. Almost nobody opens with G or H. |
| 3 | NOON | N twice, O twice. Two distinct letters, so every new letter you test is wasted. |
| 4 | BABY | B twice, plus Y. B is in 34 answers, Y in 30. |
| 5 | BOMB | A B at each end, and the last one is silent. |
| 6 | KICK | K twice and a C: three squares of the same sound. |
| 7 | KISS | Ends in SS, and MISS fits the same _ISS frame. |
| 8 | FULL | Ends in LL, and DULL and PULL share the _ULL frame. |
| 9 | MISS | Ends in SS, one letter away from KISS. |
| 10 | PULL | LL with a U. Only the first letter separates it from FULL and DULL. |
| 11 | BOSS | SS behind a rare B. Eight answers end in SS. |
| 12 | DULL | LL with a U. Eighteen answers end in LL. |
| 13 | HILL | LL behind a rare H, one letter away from FILL. |
| 14 | FILL | LL with an I. HILL, FELL, FALL and FULL are each one letter away. |
| 15 | MASS | SS with an A, and PASS fits the same frame. |
Two things jump out: nearly all of them repeat a letter, and most end in LL or SS. But the thing that really makes four letters hard is what comes after the repeat.
The real trap: families one letter apart
458 of the 517 answers, 89%, have at least one other answer that differs in a single square. Counted the same way, five-letter answers come to 55% and six-letter answers to 9%. The shorter the word, the more look-alikes crowd together.
These are the biggest families:
| Frame | Answers | Words |
|---|---|---|
| _EAR | 9 | BEAR, DEAR, FEAR, GEAR, HEAR, NEAR, TEAR, WEAR, YEAR |
| _ALL | 7 | BALL, CALL, FALL, HALL, MALL, TALL, WALL |
| _EAT | 6 | BEAT, FEAT, HEAT, MEAT, NEAT, SEAT |
| _AKE | 6 | CAKE, FAKE, LAKE, MAKE, TAKE, WAKE |
| _AST | 6 | CAST, EAST, FAST, LAST, PAST, VAST |
| _ATE | 6 | DATE, FATE, GATE, HATE, LATE, RATE |
_EAR has nine answers, and you have six tries. Once you have E, A and R in place, testing B, then D, then F one at a time can lose on bad luck alone.
So when a frame like that appears, spend a guess on a word that tests several candidate first letters at once, even if it cannot be the answer. For _EAR, one word holding three of the remaining first letters does the work of three single tries.
Repeats are rarer than in six letters
88 answers, 17%, repeat a letter. That compares with 26% at five letters and 48% at six. At four letters the instinct to test new letters is usually right.
When a repeat does come, it is in predictable places: 18 answers end in LL, 8 end in SS, and 24 have OO in the middle. If the last two squares are open and you already have an L or an S, try it twice.
Usually one vowel
253 answers (49%) have exactly one vowel (A, E, I, O, U) and 261 have two. Only AREA, EASE and IDEA have three, and none has zero. Two vowels in the opener will almost always land one; the rest of the game is consonants.
The last square is E
121 answers (23%) end in E, then T (66), L (44), D (42) and K (41). The first square is spread much more evenly; the most common first letter, F, starts only 49.
Rare letters really are rare
Q appears only in QUIZ, X in EXAM, NEXT and TEXT, J in JAZZ, JOIN, JOKE, JUMP and JURY, and Z in eight answers. K (60) and W (53) are far more common than they feel, so do not hold them back past the fourth guess.
What to open with
From the answer list itself, LOSE, ROLE and LANE are the strongest: each shares at least one letter with about 83% of the 517 answers.
As a two-word opening, MORE + SAIL touches 514 of the 517 (99%). The only answers it finds nothing in are DUTY, FUND and HUNT.
Putting it together
- Open with two vowels, and put E in the last square.
- When three squares are right and several answers still fit, test several candidate first letters with one guess.
- With the last two squares open, suspect LL and SS.
How this was counted: the answer list is all 517 words Easy Mode deals from. The difficulty score adds, for each letter, 1 minus the share of answers containing that letter; then 1.5 for every repeated letter and 1 if the word has one vowel or none. The script is scripts/letter_stats.py in the repository.
Easy Mode plays the 517 answers this post counts. The full list, with meanings, is on the 4-letter word list.