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

DOILY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈdɔɪli/

Noun

A small ornamental piece of lace or linen or paper used to protect a surface from scratches by hard objects such as vases or bowls; or to decorate a plate of food.

Noun

A similar circular piece of lace worn as a head-covering by some married Jewish women.

Alternative forms: doyley, doiley

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

From Doiley, the name of a 17th-century London draper. The surname is Anglo-Norman, from d'Œuilly, name of several places in Calvados, from Old French oeil (“eye”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

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

Rhymes with COYLY

Use DOILY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.4% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No 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.

How DOILY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DOILY 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 78.9% of games, misses completely in 21.1%, and leaves about 182 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,250 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 DOILY 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.

4.77 Entropy (bits)
182 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DOILY 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,250 Rank among openers
Opening with DOILY left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #2,250 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
982
4 guesses
1,103
5 guesses
192
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ILO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
40%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

DOILY can come back 107 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

504 answers
206 answers
202 answers
162 answers
125 answers
124 answers
116 answers
62 answers
60 answers
52 answers
48 answers
34 answers
34 answers
34 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2O1I1L1Y4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing DOILY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DOILY:

21% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
9% chance
Suggested:
CARSE
8% chance
Suggested:
CRATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.1% →
TARSE 6.45 bits
8.6% →
CARSE 5.39 bits
8.5% →
CRATE 5.37 bits
6.8% →
SANER 5.33 bits
5.2% →
TARSE 4.93 bits
5.2% →
STARE 4.93 bits
4.9% →
CRUET 4.96 bits
2.6% →
CASTE 4.25 bits
2.5% →
ARENE 4.90 bits
2.2% →
TIARE 4.27 bits

Research on DOILY

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

Optimal play

Opening with DOILY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,899 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 DOILY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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
DOILY 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.1 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).