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

BALDY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbɔːl.di//ˈbɔl.di/

Noun

Someone who is bald.

Alternative forms: baldie

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 BALDY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BALDY 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 73.0% of games, misses completely in 27.0%, and leaves about 253 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,168 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 BALDY 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.

4.40 Entropy (bits)
253 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 45% of evaluated openers
1.55 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BALDY 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,168 Rank among openers
Opening with BALDY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.69 average. It ranks #6,168 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
870
4 guesses
1,181
5 guesses
235
6 guesses
9
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

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
AL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
35%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

BALDY can come back 100 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

641 answers
261 answers
181 answers
149 answers
133 answers
129 answers
120 answers
50 answers
50 answers
44 answers
32 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
28 answers
25 answers
25 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3A1L1D2Y4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing BALDY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BALDY:

27% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
11% chance
Suggested:
STARE
8% chance
Suggested:
SLIER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.0%
TOISE 6.23 bits
11.0%
STARE 5.66 bits
7.6%
SLIER 5.01 bits
6.3%
SLATE 4.64 bits
5.6%
CONTE 4.87 bits
5.4%
SIREN 4.69 bits
5.1%
DINER 5.50 bits
2.1%
IRONE 4.62 bits
2.1%
RONTE 5.01 bits
1.9%
TORSE 3.59 bits

Research on BALDY

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

Optimal play

Opening with BALDY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #5,096 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 BALDY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 BAWLDEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BALDY is a kind of actor.

Synonyms skin

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BALDY 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.

In a sentence

His elaborate comb over doesn't conceal the fact that he's a baldy.
© tatoeba.org contributor tripbeetle (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).