Can Wordle fans guess the word of the year?

ANGRY Wordle players searching for the meaning of ‘homer’ made it the runaway winner as Cambridge Dictionary’s word of the year.

An American term for a home run in baseball, it was searched nearly 75,000 times during the first week of May when it was the controversial answer to the online word puzzle.

Many players saw winning streaks ended by the unfamiliar word as five-letter Wordle answers dominated dictionary searches.

The US spelling of ‘humor’ was the second highest search, followed by ‘caulk’, a word used in the US to mean filling space around an edge. Cambridge Dictionary said: ‘Five-letter words have simply taken over the look-ups.’ They all-but squeezed out the topical words that normally provide the word of the year. These included ‘oligarch’ following the invasion of Ukraine and ‘vulnerable’, prompted by Britain’s cost of living crisis.

Wordle creator Josh Wardle sold his game to the New York Times in January as it became a global hit.