ALLAY
ALLAY is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /əˈleɪ/
- Verb
-
To make quiet or put at rest; to pacify or appease; to quell; to calm.
“to allay popular excitement”
- Verb
-
To alleviate; to abate; to mitigate.
“to allay the severity of affliction or the bitterness of adversity”
- Noun
-
Alleviation; abatement; check.
- Noun
-
An alloy.
Alternative forms: alay
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English alayen, aleyen, aleggen, from Old English āleċġan (“to put, place, lay down, lay aside, throw down, give up, cease from, abandon; put down, allay, suppress, abolish, conquer, destroy, overcome, refute; lay upon, inflict, impose upon; diminish, take away, refuse, lessen, withhold”), from Proto-Germanic *uzlagjaną (“to lay down”), equivalent to a- + lay. Cognate with German erlegen (“to impose, cause to succumb, kill”), Gothic 𐌿𐍃𐌻𐌰𐌲𐌾𐌰𐌽 (uslagjan, “to lay down”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the second syllable Say it UHLAY.
Rhymes with TODAY DELAY ANIME ESSAY SPRAY
Related meanings
Synonyms STILL ease relieve
In a sentence
This medicine will allay the pain.
She tried to allay their fears but only ended up heightening them.
Use ALLAY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 82.9% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How ALLAY performs as a guess
ALLAY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 63.6% of games, misses completely in 36.4%, and leaves about 407 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,533 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.87 guesses in games solved within six turns.
Try your feedback pattern
Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe ALLAY used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How ALLAY performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches ALLAY in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
ALLAY can come back 71 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for ALLAY; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing ALLAY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to ALLAY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing ALLAY:
Research on ALLAY
Game-tree analysis and word research for ALLAY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with ALLAY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.91 guesses and ranks #13,979 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with ALLAY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.87, at or below the proven-optimal 3.91, because the two figures score different answer lists.
These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- ALLAY sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).