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

DRILY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adverb

Alternative spelling of dryly.

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 DRILY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DRILY 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 83.0% of games, misses completely in 17.0%, and leaves about 162 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,830 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe DRILY 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.

4.83 Entropy (bits)
162 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 73% of evaluated openers
1.11 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DRILY 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,830 Rank among openers
Opening with DRILY left 1 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,830 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
967
4 guesses
1,114
5 guesses
201
6 guesses
12
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:
ILR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
40%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

DRILY can come back 109 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

404 answers
283 answers
236 answers
132 answers
131 answers
121 answers
93 answers
64 answers
57 answers
56 answers
54 answers
50 answers
45 answers
39 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2R1I1L1Y4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing DRILY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DRILY:

17% chance
Suggested:
STANE
12% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
10% chance
Suggested:
STOAE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.0%
STANE 6.23 bits
11.9%
TARSE 5.51 bits
9.9%
STOAE 5.46 bits
5.6%
CANOE 5.20 bits
5.5%
COATE 5.12 bits
5.1%
SAUNT 4.77 bits
3.9%
STANE 5.19 bits
2.7%
SIENT 4.46 bits
2.4%
SAUTE 4.62 bits
2.4%
CLEAR 4.30 bits

Research on DRILY

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

Optimal play

Opening with DRILY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,757 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 DRILY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, 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.

How it sounds

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

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DRILY 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).