This is why I switched off of hard mode, after trying it a few times. For me while it was technically harder, it lost some strategic depth and the games became a lot less interesting.

The game isn't balanced for hard mode. It's actually possible to guess 4 of the letters correctly on the first guess and still not win.

This is why, IMO, hard mode is bad.

It's in an important sense actually easier! Sure, good play results in more guesses than in not-hard-mode, but that would be like saying a 100m sprint is easier than a 2-mile race because the latter takes longer. The more interesting measure of difficulty is how hard it is play optimally. And since the search space for not-hard-mode is bigger, I'm pretty sure it's harder.

But more importantly, hard mode is also less fun, and this thread demonstrates exactly why: the creative aspect is coming up with le mot juste for quickly honing in on the right answer. Hard mode takes away your tools to do that and sometimes even results in a thoughtless guessing game.

I kinda like when "hard mode" makes you have to come up with a possible word even if it seems impossible to think of one, which can be a satisfying puzzle, not having the restriction makes it easy to think "okay screw it, I'm going to spend a guess to search for letters".

Should be named strict mode, not hard mode.

It only forces you to reuse greens. I like to play in hard hard mode in my head, where each guess must be consistent with everything previous. Still not actually hard though, obviously.

I didn't even know hard mode existed! I came to the game late.