Another week of Wordle in the books, sweetheart, and I couldn't resist a peek at which words turned our little word game into a full-on word search across the internet.
About this chart. Each line is one Wordle answer’s search interest in the United States over the past seven days (Google Trends “Interest over time”). Values are on Google’s 0–100 scale, so you can compare how often people searched each word relative to the others this week.
How the Spike % is calculated. For each word we take the quietest day in that window (the lowest point on its line) as its usual level for the week, and the busiest day (the highest point) as the peak. The spike is the percentage increase from that low to that high: (peak − low) ÷ max(low, 1) × 100. If the week’s low is zero, we divide by 1 instead of 0 so the spike still measures how much interest rose from the floor to the peak. A larger spike means searches jumped more sharply when that word was the daily answer.
This week’s words
| Date | Word | Spike | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sun, Mar 29 | CHUMP | +2400% | (n. pl. chumps) A foolish or easily deceived person. (v.) To chew noisily; to munch. |
| Mon, Mar 30 | COMET | +264% | (n. pl. comets) A celestial body of ice and dust that orbits the sun and often develops a visible tail. (n. pl. comets) Any of several hummingbirds, especially those with long tails. |
| Tue, Mar 31 | SWAMP | +50% | to {inundate=v} [v SWAMPED, SWAMPING, SWAMPS] |
| Wed, Apr 1 | FIZZY | +260% | fizzing [adj FIZZIER, FIZZIEST] : FIZZILY [adv], FIZZINESS [n] |
| Thu, Apr 2 | SOBER | +36% | having control of one's faculties [adj SOBERER, SOBEREST] : SOBERLY [adv], SOBERNESS [n] / to make sober [v SOBERED, SOBERING, SOBERS] : SOBERINGLY [adv] |
| Fri, Apr 3 | SINGE | +9900% | to burn slightly [v SINGED, SINGEING, SINGES] : SINGABLE [adj] |
| Sat, Apr 4 | SANDY | +29% | containing or covered with sand [adj SANDIER, SANDIEST] : SANDINESS [n] |
Obscurity winner
Using search interest in the US over the last seven days, I looked for the biggest “obscurity spikes”—words that saw the largest percentage jump in searches when they appeared as the answer in the daily word puzzle. This week's standout was SINGE, with search interest spiking by about 9900% from its usual baseline: most days this week it hovered around 4 or so on the search scale, and then it jumped up to about 400 when it hit the grid. For a mid-pack difficulty word, that spike is a real mountain on the word-game charts.
Whether you aced every grid or learned a new word or two, I hope you had fun. Word games ought to feel like a treat, not a test. If you'd like to explore the trends yourself, you can see the full comparison below and turn it into your own little word-search challenge.
View these words on Google Trends (US, last 7 days)
This week nudged the all-time Wordle obscurity leaderboard: SINGE muscled its way in, and the top five most obscure answers I've seen so far are now GUNKY (+27500%), BEFIT (+25800%), SHOAL (+11100%), SERIF (+10350%), SINGE (+9900%).
For Math Nerds
What this section is for. It documents exactly how each week’s spike numbers were computed from the scaled Google Trends series, so curious readers can verify the arithmetic.
Trends window. We request a custom date range 2026-03-28 2026-04-05 (US), which is the Wordle week plus one day before and after so the chart has a little context on each side. The anchor keyword for cross-request scaling is CHUMP (the first day’s answer, in chronological order).
Scaling across separate requests. Google Trends only returns relative 0–100 values within one request. We fetch each answer in its own request paired with that anchor, then rescale each day so the anchor’s curve matches the anchor series from the first request. Concretely: scaledword(d) = rawword(d) × base_anchor(d) / rawanchor(d) when rawanchor(d) > 0, else 0.
Spike % for one word. Let L be the minimum and H the maximum of that word’s scaled daily values over the window (see table below). Define spike% = (H − L) / max(L, 1) × 100 when L ≠ H, otherwise 0%. Using max(L, 1) avoids division by zero when L = 0.
CHUMP (Wordle day 2026-03-29)
Scaled interest by date; spike for rankings uses +2400% from this series.
| Date | Interest |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-28 | 4 |
| 2026-03-29 | 100 |
| 2026-03-30 | 26 |
| 2026-03-31 | 4 |
| 2026-04-01 | 4 |
| 2026-04-02 | 4 |
| 2026-04-03 | 4 |
| 2026-04-04 | 4 |
| 2026-04-05 | 4 |
- L = 4 on: 2026-03-28, 2026-03-31, 2026-04-01, 2026-04-02, 2026-04-03, 2026-04-04, 2026-04-05
- H = 100 on: 2026-03-29
- Denominator
max(L, 1)= 4 - (100 - 4) / 4 * 100 = 2400.0000%
COMET (Wordle day 2026-03-30)
Scaled interest by date; spike for rankings uses +264% from this series.
| Date | Interest |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-28 | 132 |
| 2026-03-29 | 110 |
| 2026-03-30 | 133 |
| 2026-03-31 | 132 |
| 2026-04-01 | 124 |
| 2026-04-02 | 120 |
| 2026-04-03 | 136 |
| 2026-04-04 | 208 |
| 2026-04-05 | 400 |
- L = 110 on: 2026-03-29
- H = 400 on: 2026-04-05
- Denominator
max(L, 1)= 110 - (400 - 110) / 110 * 100 = 263.6364%
SWAMP (Wordle day 2026-03-31)
Scaled interest by date; spike for rankings uses +50% from this series.
| Date | Interest |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-28 | 188 |
| 2026-03-29 | 169 |
| 2026-03-30 | 147 |
| 2026-03-31 | 125 |
| 2026-04-01 | 172 |
| 2026-04-02 | 166 |
| 2026-04-03 | 164 |
| 2026-04-04 | 184 |
| 2026-04-05 | 154 |
- L = 125 on: 2026-03-31
- H = 188 on: 2026-03-28
- Denominator
max(L, 1)= 125 - (188 - 125) / 125 * 100 = 50.4000%
FIZZY (Wordle day 2026-04-01)
Scaled interest by date; spike for rankings uses +260% from this series.
| Date | Interest |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-28 | 18 |
| 2026-03-29 | 18 |
| 2026-03-30 | 15 |
| 2026-03-31 | 15 |
| 2026-04-01 | 54 |
| 2026-04-02 | 23 |
| 2026-04-03 | 17 |
| 2026-04-04 | 18 |
| 2026-04-05 | 16 |
- L = 15 on: 2026-03-30, 2026-03-31
- H = 54 on: 2026-04-01
- Denominator
max(L, 1)= 15 - (54 - 15) / 15 * 100 = 260.0000%
SOBER (Wordle day 2026-04-02)
Scaled interest by date; spike for rankings uses +36% from this series.
| Date | Interest |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-28 | 112 |
| 2026-03-29 | 116 |
| 2026-03-30 | 98 |
| 2026-03-31 | 100 |
| 2026-04-01 | 104 |
| 2026-04-02 | 133 |
| 2026-04-03 | 112 |
| 2026-04-04 | 112 |
| 2026-04-05 | 125 |
- L = 98 on: 2026-03-30
- H = 133 on: 2026-04-02
- Denominator
max(L, 1)= 98 - (133 - 98) / 98 * 100 = 35.7143%
SINGE (Wordle day 2026-04-03)
Scaled interest by date; spike for rankings uses +9900% from this series.
| Date | Interest |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-28 | 4 |
| 2026-03-29 | 5 |
| 2026-03-30 | 5 |
| 2026-03-31 | 4 |
| 2026-04-01 | 4 |
| 2026-04-02 | 6 |
| 2026-04-03 | 400 |
| 2026-04-04 | 100 |
| 2026-04-05 | 6 |
- L = 4 on: 2026-03-28, 2026-03-31, 2026-04-01
- H = 400 on: 2026-04-03
- Denominator
max(L, 1)= 4 - (400 - 4) / 4 * 100 = 9900.0000%
SANDY (Wordle day 2026-04-04)
Scaled interest by date; spike for rankings uses +29% from this series.
| Date | Interest |
|---|---|
| 2026-03-28 | 376 |
| 2026-03-29 | 311 |
| 2026-03-30 | 338 |
| 2026-03-31 | 348 |
| 2026-04-01 | 368 |
| 2026-04-02 | 384 |
| 2026-04-03 | 368 |
| 2026-04-04 | 400 |
| 2026-04-05 | 320 |
- L = 311 on: 2026-03-29
- H = 400 on: 2026-04-04
- Denominator
max(L, 1)= 311 - (400 - 311) / 311 * 100 = 28.6174%
Ranking order sorts words by spike% descending; ties are broken only by Python’s stable sort (original dict iteration order), not by puzzle date.