BILLY
BILLY is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈbɪli/
- Noun
-
A fellow, companion, comrade, mate; partner, brother.
- Noun
-
A good friend.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
Of obscure origin. Perhaps a variant of bully (“companion, mate, comrade”). Compare Scots billie (“a comrade; companion”). Compare also Middle Low German billig (“equitable, reasonable, lawful, fitting, according to natural law, just”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it BIHLEE.
Rhymes with SILLY CHILE CHILI WILLY HILLY
Related meanings
Synonyms BATON
In a sentence
Billy is good at sports.
Billy is good at sport.
Use BILLY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 83.5% 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 →BILLY in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #817
Reveal this appearance's category
BILLY appeared in MALE ANIMALS (blue group).
How BILLY performs as a guess
BILLY 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 64.2% of games, misses completely in 35.8%, and leaves about 392 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,479 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 BILLY 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 BILLY 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 BILLY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
BILLY can come back 80 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 BILLY; 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 BILLY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BILLY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BILLY:
Research on BILLY
Game-tree analysis and word research for BILLY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BILLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #11,855 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 BILLY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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
- BILLY sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 21 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
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).