Weekly Recap

Jul 27 – Aug 2, 2026

236

Players

140

Solved

60%

Solve Rate

39.6

Avg Guesses

Numbers come from actual gameplay on this site.

Week in Review

During the week of Jul 27 – Aug 2, 2026, players logged 236 game sessions across the daily Hot & Cold challenges, and 140 of those runs ended with the secret word found — an average daily solve rate of 60%. Successful solvers needed about 39.6 guesses on average, while 96 sessions ended with the answer revealed instead.

The toughest puzzle landed on Wed, Jul 29, where only 53% of players tracked down the secret word after roughly 37.1 guesses on average. At the other end of the spectrum, Mon, Jul 27 was the friendliest day of the week: 74% of players got there in about 35.3 guesses.

Popular opening guesses this week included banana, animal, food and emotion — broad category words remain the community's favorite way to scan for the right semantic neighborhood before narrowing in.

Missed a day? Every challenge from this week can still be replayed from the archive. And if your solve rate dipped, the starting-words guide covers how to open more efficiently.

Day by Day

Mon, Jul 2746 players

74% solved · ~35.3 guesses

Popular openers: foodbananaanimal

Tue, Jul 2845 players

56% solved · ~42.6 guesses

Popular openers: bananaanimal

Wed, Jul 2955 players

53% solved · ~37.1 guesses

Popular openers: animalbanana

Thu, Jul 3048 players

56% solved · ~41.1 guesses

Popular openers: animalbananafood

Fri, Jul 3142 players

60% solved · ~41.7 guesses

Popular openers: animalbananaemotion

A

Alex Huang

Creator of Hot & Cold

Independent developer building word games at the intersection of NLP and play. I ship Hot & Cold's daily challenges, maintain the ranking pipeline, and occasionally lose to my own puzzles.

Weekly Recap: Jul 27 – Aug 2, 2026 – Hot & Cold