Um, what? It’s well known in any large Metro area in the US and probably more than that. People in Los Angeles and Chicago and St Louis certainly know the word.
The original list created by the original devs will take us through near the end of next year. Josh Wardle is British and maybe PRATE is a more common word over there. Not sure about that. IIRC, the NY Times did modify the original list to take out a small number of words the were British spellings (like FIBRE) or potentially offensive/triggering (like SLAVE). You can use them as guesses but they won’t be a solution.
Midwesterner here. Born in Indiana, lived there for several years before moving to Kentucky, where I lived for even longer. Recent transplant to Alabama (like 3 months ago).
Prate stumped me. I got down to _rate and my last two guesses were ‘irate’ and ‘orate’.
I think the words have gotten tougher in the past year or so, but I like the challenge. I think whoever took it over when the Times purchased the game has been tweaking it over time, trying out different strategies. For awhile it seemed too easy. They were using themed words on special days, it seemed. I’m pretty sure I remember a Thanksgiving where the word was ‘feast’.
IIRC, Wardle’s original solutions list had 2,315 words on it, but the NYT knocked six words off it, leaving 2,309 words.
Today was Wordle 1967, but since there was a Wordle 0 (CIGAR), we’d be down to 2309 - 1968 = 341 remaining unused solutions.
BUT we’ve had 28 old solutions that have been reused (starting with CIGAR), plus at least 37 solutions that weren’t on Wardle’s original list that the NYT has added. (My count of 37 is through late July. Chances are we’ve seen another nine or ten since then.) So there’s at least 341 + 65 = 406 remaining unused solutions from Wardle’s list.
That would carry us through until mid-December of 2027 if there were to be no more reused solutions, and no more non-Wardle solutions since late July or yet to come. But of course there will be both.
That was fortunately just for a brief period in November of 2022. The day the NYT took over a more active role in the management of the game, the solution was BEGIN, Wordle 506. Then a few days later, on Veterans’ Day, the solution was MEDAL. Then DRIVE on the day before Thanksgiving, and FEAST on Thanksgiving itself.
They must’ve gotten a bunch of negative feedback about that, because they stopped being cutesy after that. Other than the day they started reusing old solutions - on Groundhog Day, of course, and the reused solution was Wordle 0, CIGAR. But with that one exception, AFAIK they’ve played it straight since Black Friday of 2022.
“Dreck” seems to be a common word in show biz or show biz critique. I grew up in SoCal, and as noted by somebody upthread, MAD Magazine used it constantly. That magazine being staple reading of my kidhood, that’s a good bet for where I first got it.
I did not mean to suggest that nobody outside the Northeast ever encountered Yiddish words that have made their way into English. Dreck, schmuck, chutzpah, etc. Just that the OP, living far from there, might have missed a few more than other folks from elsewhere.
I think I’ve encountered “prate” as such in the wild once, maybe twice. Reading something from the UK, or pre WW-II, or both. And it was unfamiliar the first time. But from context I quickly made the connection to “prattle”, a word that gets (or got in my youth) a lot more use that prate or prating.
I don’t play Wordle, but the odds on me getting PRATE in less than about 15 turns after getting to “_RATE” are very very low. And yes, I know you don’t get 15 turns in Wordle. I’d lose. A lot.
“Prate” seems like a fairly ordinary word to me. I don’t use it every day, but I certainly know it and don’t consider it rare. I’m not too surprised that it isn’t the first word that comes to mind to solve _RATE, but I’m rather shocked that some people in this thread claim they’ve never heard it. The Oxford English Dictionary says it occurs about 0.1 times per million words. That’s the same as “orate” which I hope no one considers an exceptionally rare word, and about 7 times less frequent than “irate” which is certainly a common word.
I don’t think I’ve ever spoken the word prate out loud in my life but I’ve certainly used irate plenty of times. That probably says more about me than anything else.
I got it on the third try but since I start with raise and Pluto all I had to do was move to letters. I had to go back to see the word pirate as I did not recall it. Because I did not have to think what the word could be.
I grew up in the northeast (after being born in the Philippines). There was a lot of Yiddish, but no use of dreck IIRC. I’ve been in California for the last 40 some years.
FYI, we could play it before he sold it to NYT.
Thank you! Ignorance fought.
STARE has been my usual starting word for a long time. I prefer that over TEARS because Wordles usually don’t end in S. One exception was ETHOS, but they usually avoid plurals.
TYVM!
While my hometown is in Upstate New York, I lived in Connecticut for my JHS and HS years!
