CRUFT
CRUFT is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /kɹʌft/
- Noun
-
Anything that is old or of inferior quality.
- Noun
-
Redundant, old or improperly written code, especially that which accumulates over time.
- Verb
-
To generate cruft.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
Circa 1959, MIT Tech Model Railroad Club. Unknown origin; possibly from Cruft Hall, built in 1915 as a gift from a donor named Harriet Otis Cruft. Cruft Hall was the radar laboratory of Harvard's physics department during the Second World War, which contained much old and unused technical equipment. Possibly blend of crust + fluff, both of which may form on old abandoned things, or influenced by crud.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
Use CRUFT in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 90.7% 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
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
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 CRUFT performs as a guess
Wordle accepts CRUFT 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 75.2% of games, misses completely in 24.8%, and leaves about 221 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,173 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 CRUFT 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 CRUFT 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
Feedback distribution
CRUFT can come back 101 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 CRUFT; 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 CRUFT
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to CRUFT.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing CRUFT:
Research on CRUFT
Game-tree analysis and word research for CRUFT, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with CRUFT, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,808 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 CRUFT can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- CRUFT 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).