Recently, Farnik asked whether the hat guessing number $\text{HG}(G)$ of a graph $G$ could be bounded as a function of its degeneracy $d$, and Bosek, Dudek, Farnik, Grytczuk and Mazur showed that $\text{HG}(G)\ge 2^d$ is possible. We show that for all $d\ge 1$ there exists a $d$-degenerate graph $G$ for which $\text{HG}(G) \ge 2^{2^{d-1}}$. We also give a new general method for obtaining upper bounds on $\text{HG}(G)$. The question of whether $\text{HG}(G)$ is bounded as a function of $d$ remains open.