CAGEY
CAGEY is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈkeɪd͡ʒi/
- Adjective
-
Wary, careful, shrewd.
- Adjective
-
Uncommunicative; unwilling or hesitant to give information.
Alternative forms: cagy
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
Initially US colloquial, of unknown origin. A connection with the behavior of caged prisoners (wary and closed-lipped) and caged animals (wary) has been speculated. If so, by surface analysis, cage + -y.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KAYJEE.
Related meanings
Synonyms clever SMART cautious
Opposites stupid
In a sentence
She's cagey about her plans.
Tom is always cagey on the phone.
Use CAGEY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 94.2% 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 CAGEY performs as a guess
CAGEY 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 87.2% of games, misses completely in 12.8%, and leaves about 139 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,839 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 CAGEY 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 CAGEY 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 CAGEY in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
CAGEY can come back 97 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 CAGEY; 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 CAGEY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to CAGEY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing CAGEY:
Research on CAGEY
Game-tree analysis and word research for CAGEY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with CAGEY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,702 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 CAGEY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.72; proven optimal play reaches 3.70. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.
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
- CAGEY 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.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.3 of 5).
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).