DEFER
Yes, DEFER was the Wordle answer on September 20, 2025 (Wordle #1554).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /dɪˈfɜː//dɪˈfeː//dɪˈfɛː/
- Verb
-
To delay or postpone.
“We're going to defer the decision until we have all the facts.”
- Verb
-
After winning the opening coin toss, to postpone until the start of the second half a team's choice of whether to kick off or receive (and to allow the opposing team to make this choice at the start of the first half).
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
Originally a variant of (and hence a doublet of) differ; from Middle English differren (“to postpone”), from Old French differer, from Latin differō. Doublet of differ and dilate. See also infer, collate and confer, delate and defer, relate and refer as well as prelate and prefer among others.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the second syllable Say it DIHFUR.
Rhymes with OCCUR REFER INTER DETER INCUR
Related meanings
Synonyms TABLE bow submit postpone REMIT
In a sentence
I could not defer my job to no one.
I'll defer to your judgment.
Use DEFER in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 88.5% 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
Used oncePast Wordle answer: September 20, 2025 (#1554).
See the full page for that puzzle: September 20, 2025 (#1554).
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 DEFER performs as a guess
DEFER 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 72.1% of games, misses completely in 27.9%, and leaves about 274 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,442 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 DEFER 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 DEFER 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 DEFER in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
DEFER can come back 85 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 DEFER; 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 DEFER
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to DEFER.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing DEFER:
Research on DEFER
Game-tree analysis and word research for DEFER, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with DEFER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,604 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 DEFER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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
- DEFER sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (2.8 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).