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

BIFFS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of biff

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of biff

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

Related meanings

Synonyms PUNCH lick poke slug CLOUT

Use BIFFS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 79.4% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No 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.

How BIFFS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BIFFS 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 60.8% of games, misses completely in 39.2%, and leaves about 491 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,991 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.90 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 BIFFS 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.

3.17 Entropy (bits)
491 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
79.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BIFFS 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.

3.90 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#13,991 Rank among openers
Opening with BIFFS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.90 average. It ranks #13,991 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
35
3 guesses
592
4 guesses
1,320
5 guesses
385
6 guesses
21

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
IS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
61%
Green tile
19%
All gray
39%

Feedback distribution

BIFFS can come back 54 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

934 answers
412 answers
266 answers
137 answers
114 answers
98 answers
86 answers
63 answers
31 answers
26 answers
23 answers
21 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers
3 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3I1F4F4S1
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing BIFFS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BIFFS:

39% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
17% chance
Suggested:
STARE
11% chance
Suggested:
CRANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

39.2% →
ROATE 6.08 bits
17.3% →
STARE 5.64 bits
11.2% →
CRANE 5.51 bits
5.7% →
RONTE 4.70 bits
4.8% →
OLATE 5.16 bits
4.1% →
STILE 4.48 bits
3.6% →
ALURE 5.17 bits
2.6% →
ALURE 5.19 bits
1.3% →
SMOTE 3.85 bits
1.1% →
FLIRT 4.47 bits

Research on BIFFS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BIFFS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.91 guesses and ranks #14,031 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.05 guesses at best and is rank #6,736 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.90, 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
BIFFS sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).