Hurdle is a daily word game that seemingly builds on the idea of Wordle, but turns the game up a notch. The game is a daily word puzzle that will put your knowledge of the English language to the test by increasing the pressure and difficulty as you play.
Curious how to play Hurdle? Or interested in tips on achieving the best possible score? Here’s everything you need to know about Hurdle, including how to play and some tips on ways to improve your score at the end.
How to play today’s Hurdle
The goal of Hurdle is to correctly guess a secret five-letter word, through six guesses that will give you hints about the final word as you go.
You’ll start by guessing a 5-letter word. After hitting enter, the tiles of letters for that word will flip and turn one of three colors: gray, yellow, or green. Here’s what the colors mean.
Gray: The letter isn’t in the word.
Yellow: The letter is in the word, but in a different spot.
Green: The letter is in the word, and it’s in the correct spot.
So far, the game is a lot like Wordle, right? This, however, is where the similarities end. Once you guess the correct word, you’ll move on to the next Hurdle, but this time, the word from the previous puzzle will be automatically entered as the first guessed word. Get the second Hurdle correct, and you’ll move on to the third Hurdle, which will have the words from the first two Hurdles pre-filled. By the time you get to the fifth and final Hurdle puzzle for the day, you’ll only have two chances to solve the puzzle using the color tile clues pre-filled by the first four words.
Not so easy now, is it?
At the end of the game, you can use the Recap function to check your answers, and if you didn’t guess a word correctly, you’ll be told what the word was at the top of the screen.
Challenge yourself with Hard Mode
As if the game on its own wasn’t hard enough, you can challenge yourself even further with a dedicated hard mode. Hard mode increases the pressure by forcing you to use any revealed hints in your subsequent guesses. So, if any letters show yellow or green in one guess, you’ll be forced to use them in further guesses.
To enable hard mode, press the three-button hamburger menu on the top left of the puzzle, then press the settings option. Finally, toggle on the hard mode option, then close the settings menu by tapping on the “X” on the top right of the screen.
How are scores calculated?
If you’re constantly trying to beat your previous score, you might be wondering how scores are calculated. It’s actually not all that complicated. Here’s a rundown of how scores are calculated based on whether you won or lost, and your game mode:
Game won: 1,000 + (100 x number of empty lines) + Winning Bonus
Game lost: (10 x number of yellow letters on the keyboard) + (20 x number of green letters on the keyboard)
The winning bonus is 4,000 points and it’s awarded at the end of all the hurdles. So you won’t get a winning bonus for completing just the first hurdle, for example. The maximum possible score in Normal mode is 10,800 points. In Hard mode, scores are multiplied by 1.5, bringing the maximum total score to 16,200 points.
High Contrast Mode
The game offers a High Contrast Mode too, which is aimed at making it easier to see different colors for those with certain color blindnesses. When High Contrast Mode is turned on, letters that are in the correct spot will be orange instead of green. Letters in the word but in the wrong spot will be blue instead of yellow.
To turn on High Contrast Mode, press the three-lined menu button on the top left of the puzzle. Then press the settings button and toggle on High Contrast Mode. Close the settings menu by tapping on the “X” in the top right of the screen.
Tips for getting the best score
Looking for tips on how to get a better score? There are a few things to keep in mind as you play.
Linguistic researchers note that vowels are the most common letters in the English language, so your first word should contain as many vowels as possible.
Additionally, for at least the first few words, you should try to use words with five different letters, as this will maximize the number of clues you’ll get.
There are some other things to consider too. Most of the time, the word won’t be a plural, unless it’s an irregular plural like “Geese.” Also, it’s worth keeping in mind the fact that the word could have two of the same letter – so if you’re stuck, and not sure why you can’t think of a word, try to think of ways in which a letter you got right could be in the word twice.
Last but not least, you don’t have to play entirely on the screen – if you’re having trouble, it can help to get out a good ol’ pen and paper, and try to brainstorm that way. This will help you eliminate words without using up your guesses.
