DITCH
DITCH is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /dɪt͡ʃ/
- Noun
-
A trench; a long, shallow indentation, as for irrigation or drainage.
“Digging ditches has long been considered one of the most demanding forms of manual labor.”
- Noun
-
A raised bank of earth and the hedgerow on top.
- Verb
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To discard or abandon.
“Once the sun came out we ditched our rain-gear and started a campfire.”
- Verb
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To deliberately crash-land an airplane on water.
“When the second engine failed, the pilot was forced to ditch; their last location was just south of the Azores.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English dich, from Old English dīċ (“trench, moat”) from Proto-Germanic *dīkaz (compare Swedish dike, Icelandic díki, West Frisian dyk (“dam”), Dutch dijk (“dam”), German Teich (“pond”)), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰeygʷ- (“to stick, set up”) (compare Latin fīgō (“to affix, fasten”), Lithuanian diegti (“to prick; plant”), dýgsti (“to geminate, grow”)). Doublet of dike.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it DIHCH.
Rhymes with WHICH BITCH PITCH WITCH MITCH
Related meanings
Synonyms CHUCK dump trench
In a sentence
Why did you ditch me?
He fell in the ditch.
Use DITCH in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 89.6% 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
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 →DITCH in Connections
4 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #591
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DITCH appeared in RESULTS OF SOME DIGGING (green group).
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· Puzzle #327
Reveal this appearance's category
DITCH appeared in CAST OFF (green group).
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· Puzzle #287
Reveal this appearance's category
DITCH appeared in FAIL TO ATTEND (green group).
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· Puzzle #222
Reveal this appearance's category
DITCH appeared in LEAVE HIGH AND DRY (green group).
How DITCH performs as a guess
DITCH 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 72.7% of games, misses completely in 27.3%, and leaves about 249 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,780 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 DITCH 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 DITCH 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 DITCH in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
DITCH can come back 86 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 DITCH; 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 DITCH
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to DITCH.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing DITCH:
Research on DITCH
Game-tree analysis and word research for DITCH, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with DITCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,721 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 DITCH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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
- DITCH sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 8 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 8, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 66 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.3 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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).