Possible answer Not used yet F tier for first-turn info

DULLY

DULLY is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 81.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adverb

In a dull manner; without liveliness; without lustre.

Adjective

Dim, indistinct.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 DULLY performs as a guess

DULLY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 61.2% of games, misses completely in 38.8%, and leaves about 429 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,778 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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 DULLY 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.

3.71 Entropy (bits)
429 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
81.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 12% of evaluated openers
2.24 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DULLY 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#12,778 Rank among openers
Opening with DULLY 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 3.83 average. It ranks #12,778 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
731
4 guesses
1,188
5 guesses
365
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:
LU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
61%
Green tile
31%
All gray
39%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I M Y
B A D L Y
D U L L Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches DULLY in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

DULLY can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

921 answers
269 answers
176 answers
164 answers
127 answers
83 answers
51 answers
49 answers
48 answers
43 answers
38 answers
32 answers
30 answers
27 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2U1L1L1Y4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing DULLY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DULLY:

39% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
11% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
7% chance
Suggested:
SATER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

38.8%
TARSE 6.36 bits
11.3%
TIARE 5.30 bits
7.4%
SATER 4.95 bits
6.9%
CRUST 5.37 bits
5.3%
ARISE 5.59 bits
3.5%
CARTE 4.67 bits
2.1%
IRONE 5.00 bits
2.1%
SOARE 4.58 bits
2.0%
SCONE 3.69 bits
1.8%
PAISE 4.51 bits

Research on DULLY

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

Optimal play

Opening with DULLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #12,111 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 DULLY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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 DUHLEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DULLY 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.

In a sentence

From time to time lightning flashes, and thunder rumbles dully.
© tatoeba.org contributor AlanF_US (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).