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

DERNY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈdɜː(ɹ)ni/

Noun

A motorized bicycle for paced cycling events such as keirin.

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 DERNY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DERNY 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 84.8% of games, misses completely in 15.2%, and leaves about 149 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,894 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 DERNY 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)
149 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.7% 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 DERNY 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#2,894 Rank among openers
Opening with DERNY left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #2,894 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
76
3 guesses
930
4 guesses
1,141
5 guesses
185
6 guesses
20
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

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ENR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
37%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

DERNY can come back 114 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

362 answers
286 answers
201 answers
177 answers
144 answers
109 answers
79 answers
74 answers
63 answers
58 answers
50 answers
46 answers
40 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2E1R1N1Y4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing DERNY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DERNY:

15% chance
Suggested:
COAST
12% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
8% chance
Suggested:
COAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.2%
COAST 6.03 bits
12.0%
SLATE 5.77 bits
8.5%
COAST 4.73 bits
7.5%
COAST 5.48 bits
6.1%
SAULT 4.81 bits
4.6%
SATIN 5.24 bits
3.3%
ANOLE 4.51 bits
3.1%
SAULT 4.87 bits
2.7%
SHALT 4.93 bits
2.4%
COAST 4.76 bits

Research on DERNY

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

Optimal play

Opening with DERNY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,381 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 DERNY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it DURNEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DERNY 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).