Accepted guess Not a possible answer F tier for first-turn info

BAFFY

BAFFY is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

As an opener, it rules out about 79.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

An obsolete wooden golf club with high loft.

Noun

The 4-wood or 5-wood

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How BAFFY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BAFFY as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 61.5% of games, misses completely in 38.5%, and leaves about 481 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,281 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.93 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe BAFFY 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.

3.24 Entropy (bits)
481 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
79.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 3% of evaluated openers
2.71 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BAFFY 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.

3.93 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#14,281 Rank among openers
Opening with BAFFY left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.93 average. It ranks #14,281 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
35
3 guesses
569
4 guesses
1,305
5 guesses
419
6 guesses
23
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
A

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
62%
Green tile
33%
All gray
38%

Feedback distribution

BAFFY can come back 56 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

915 answers
453 answers
194 answers
181 answers
90 answers
82 answers
66 answers
43 answers
39 answers
35 answers
32 answers
31 answers
30 answers
19 answers
19 answers
15 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for BAFFY; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

B3A1F4F4Y4
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Strategy after playing BAFFY

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BAFFY.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BAFFY:

39% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
19% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
8% chance
Suggested:
SIRED

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

38.5%
TOISE 6.10 bits
19.1%
SLATE 5.53 bits
8.2%
SIRED 4.55 bits
7.6%
RONTE 4.82 bits
3.8%
TOILE 5.01 bits
3.5%
TRINE 5.20 bits
2.8%
SLART 3.46 bits
1.8%
SLART 4.20 bits
1.6%
ROUTE 4.82 bits
1.5%
SLADE 4.09 bits

Research on BAFFY

Game-tree analysis and word research for BAFFY, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with BAFFY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.93 guesses and ranks #14,270 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.10 guesses at best and is rank #7,121 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.93, at or below the proven-optimal 3.93, 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it BAFEE. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.