Today's Hurdle FAQs

[AARPLynne]

What is Today’s Hurdle?

Today’s Hurdle is a fun, tough twist on Wordle, the popular word-guessing game. If you’ve been caught up in the word-game craze, you’ll love the challenge of Today’s Hurdle!

How does it work?

In Today’s Hurdle, you’ll get six tries to guess a five-letter word. Start by guessing any five-letter word. When you submit it, you’ll see some letters receive a yellow background, and some letters receive a green background.

If the background is green, you’ve guessed the correct letter in the correct spot. If it’s yellow, that letter exists somewhere else in the word. Try to figure out the correct word before using all six tries!

How is Today’s Hurdle different than Wordle?

The basic rules, above, match up with Wordle. But Today’s Hurdle separates itself by offering five puzzles every day.

When you get your first puzzle correct, the final word will pre-populate as the first “guess” of the next puzzle. For instance, if the answer to the first puzzle is “ocean,” the second puzzle will begin with “ocean” already in the first guess. If any of the letters in that word match with the new answer, you’ll see them with yellow or green backgrounds.

Today’s Hurdle has an extra challenge if you get to the fifth and final puzzle of the day. If you’ve guessed all four puzzles correctly, the fifth puzzle will begin with the first four guess slots filled in with the answers of the previous puzzles. That means you get just two guesses to beat the game!

How can I get more points?

The scoring in Today’s Hurdle breaks down like this:

• 1,000 points for completion of a puzzle
• 100 points for each unused line

If you finish a puzzle on your fourth guess, you’ll have two unused lines — which means you get 1,200 points!

These rules are the same for all five puzzles — no one puzzle is more important, score-wise, than the others. However, you get an extra bonus for finishing the fifth puzzle. You still get 1,000 points for solving the puzzle, and 100 points if you have an unused line. This time, though, you’ll get 4,000 additional points for winning!

How often can I play a new game of Today’s Hurdle?

A new suite of puzzles will become available every day!

Can I play all five puzzles if I don’t solve one?

No. If you can’t solve one of the puzzles within six guesses, you get a game over for the day.

[DeniseL834804]

Is there an easier way to get to the game then going through the search function? Why don’t they just put it in the games section?

[Vexed]

@DeniseL834804 , you can do several things besides search. The game is listed in the Games section (not here in the community forum - didn't know where you were searching). The main side bar menu reached by clicking the 3 bars with "Menu" under it at top left. Scroll to "Games", click that and it takes to the listing for all Games. At "Word" games grouping click "View More" . That takes you to all the Word game listings and Today's Hurdle is there.

Also, at the bottom of this all games listing page is a "Recently Played". This shows you 3 games that you have recently played. If you haven't played too many games, the Today's Hurdle" link may be there from the day before.

Easiest way is to bookmark this game or your other favorites by whatever method your browser uses. Here is the url link to "Today's Hurdle".

https://games.aarp.org/games/todays-hurdle 

Hope this helps.

[r767831w]

I would really like a response to my question about how people are scoring higher than the scoring system permits.  Please respond.

[r767831w]

Then how is it possible that the top scorers each day have 14,000+ points?

[AARPLynne]

Hi, @r767831w, thanks for your question. Anyone scoring above 10,800 is playing in Hard Mode. In hard mode your score will be multiplied by 1.5 so the highest score is 10,800 * 1.5 = 16,200 points.

To enable hard mode, click on the "hamburger" menu in the top left corner, click on Settings and enable the Hard Mode.
Hurdle Settings | Hard Mode

[garyfish49]

Please note that when clearing your AARP cookies, your Hurdle settings revert back to Regular Mode. So, remember to re-enable Hard Mode before starting another Hurdle session.

[r767831w]

Gotcha, thanks!  Suggestion:  Put that info in your directions on how to play and score points, so people don't come away thinking that others must be cheating.

[Heather53344]

Well, people scoring 16200 are playing the game using multiple logons - not sure if you consider that cheating or not, but it is funny the effort people take to get their name on the leaderboard.  Also, if you search "Arkadium Game Scoring", you can find a description on how each of their games are scored.

[RichardW604749]

To get 16,200 points, you need to guess every word on the first guess. Some of the words have no clues. So, it would seem virtually impossible to guess every word.

However, the rules mention "Gems", which can provide clues. That could be the answer. How does one get a Gem?

[Kat903213V]

Yep!  I had a friend provide me with the answers to one of the daily games just to see if that's how all those 16,200s are being achieved.  There's no way I'd have guessed each of those words without some sort of clue but, yeah, when I put in the words I'd been provided with my score was 16,200.  I kinda felt cheated, not because others are clearly cheating to get their name on the leaderboard (I consider it cheating since that particular game is intended to be played only once a day by each person) but because I didn't get to actually play the game that day.  You would think that by the time we're of AARP age, we'd be beyond that sort of manipulation.  And, really, what kind of satisfaction can you get out of seeing I681753m on the leaderboard with a score of 16200?  LOL!