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

DELLY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Having many dells.

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 DELLY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DELLY 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 75.6% of games, misses completely in 24.4%, and leaves about 284 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,338 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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 DELLY 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.

4.09 Entropy (bits)
284 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 27% of evaluated openers
1.86 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DELLY 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.

3.82 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#12,338 Rank among openers
Opening with DELLY left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.82 average. It ranks #12,338 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
712
4 guesses
1,224
5 guesses
336
6 guesses
27
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:
EL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
33%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

DELLY can come back 83 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

579 answers
476 answers
184 answers
174 answers
115 answers
113 answers
80 answers
70 answers
37 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2E1L1L1Y4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing DELLY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DELLY:

24% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
20% chance
Suggested:
STAIR
8% chance
Suggested:
COAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.4%
ROAST 6.08 bits
20.1%
STAIR 5.56 bits
7.8%
COAST 5.03 bits
7.3%
SAUNT 4.74 bits
4.8%
SLART 4.43 bits
4.8%
RANSE 4.78 bits
3.4%
ARISE 4.65 bits
2.9%
HOARD 4.87 bits
1.6%
SAINT 4.16 bits
1.3%
SPAER 3.81 bits

Research on DELLY

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

Optimal play

Opening with DELLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,020 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 DELLY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82; proven optimal play reaches 3.81. 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 DEHLEE. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DELLY 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).