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

DEBBY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 82.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Like a debutante.

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

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

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 DEBBY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DEBBY 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 69.3% of games, misses completely in 30.7%, and leaves about 412 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,045 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 DEBBY 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.

3.45 Entropy (bits)
412 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
82.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 6% of evaluated openers
2.49 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DEBBY 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
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#14,045 Rank among openers
Opening with DEBBY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.90 average. It ranks #14,045 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
598
4 guesses
1,295
5 guesses
400
6 guesses
23
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
E

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
29%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

DEBBY can come back 62 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

728 answers
596 answers
214 answers
131 answers
90 answers
86 answers
77 answers
40 answers
32 answers
30 answers
30 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
8 answers
8 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2E1B3B3Y4
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing DEBBY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DEBBY:

31% chance
Suggested:
COAST
25% chance
Suggested:
STAIR
9% chance
Suggested:
SAULT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

30.7%
COAST 5.98 bits
25.1%
STAIR 5.47 bits
9.0%
SAULT 4.78 bits
5.5%
RANSE 4.76 bits
3.8%
ARIEL 4.68 bits
3.6%
SOLAR 4.90 bits
3.2%
ROAST 4.95 bits
1.7%
ORATE 4.47 bits
1.3%
SAINT 4.16 bits
1.3%
SLART 3.96 bits

Research on DEBBY

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

Optimal play

Opening with DEBBY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.89 guesses and ranks #13,645 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 DEBBY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.90; proven optimal play reaches 3.89. 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it DEHBEE.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DEBBY 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.

In a sentence

I said hello to Debby but she totally ignored me.
© tatoeba.org contributor CN (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).