Possible answer Not used yet B tier for first-turn info

CRONY

CRONY is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 93.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkɹoʊni//ˈkɹəʊni/

Noun

A close friend.

Noun

A trusted companion or partner in a criminal organization.

Alternative forms: chrony

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 CRONY performs as a guess

CRONY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,360 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 80.9% of games, misses completely in 19.1%, and leaves about 156 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,150 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 CRONY 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.

4.93 Entropy (bits)
156 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 80% of evaluated openers
1.02 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CRONY 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#1,150 Rank among openers
Opening with CRONY solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #1,150 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
992
4 guesses
1,141
5 guesses
148
6 guesses
14
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.45 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
NOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
43%
All gray
19%

Example solver route

R O A T E
G R I N D
C R O N Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches CRONY in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

CRONY can come back 109 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

451 answers
240 answers
153 answers
121 answers
105 answers
101 answers
90 answers
89 answers
80 answers
76 answers
54 answers
49 answers
47 answers
38 answers
37 answers
35 answers
32 answers
31 answers
27 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CRONY:

19% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
10% chance
Suggested:
SALET
6% chance
Suggested:
SAULT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.1%
SLATE 6.56 bits
10.2%
SALET 5.43 bits
6.5%
SAULT 4.81 bits
5.1%
ANILE 5.15 bits
4.4%
TOILE 5.10 bits
4.3%
STADE 4.95 bits
3.8%
SATEM 4.49 bits
3.8%
SHALE 5.09 bits
3.4%
SLATE 4.94 bits
3.2%
STAGE 4.89 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3R1O1N1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

The science of CRONY

What game-tree analysis and word research measure about CRONY — each figure with what it means.

Optimal play

Opening with CRONY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses — rank #2,528 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best — rank #1,428 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60 — at or below the proven-optimal 3.67 only 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) — not the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable — say it KROHNEE.

Rhymes with PHONY STONY CONEY BONEY TONEY

Meaning network

In WordNet's sense inventory, CRONY is a kind of friend.

Synonyms BUDDY pal sidekick

How people know it

Frequency
CRONY sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English — an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

Tom is a crony capitalist.
© tatoeba.org contributor Spamster (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).