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

DYING

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈdaɪ.ɪŋ/

Adjective

Approaching death; about to die; moribund.

“The dying dog was put out of his misery with a single shot!”

Adjective

Declining, terminal, or drawing to an end.

“In the dying moments of daylight I glimpsed a sail on the horizon.”

Noun

The process of approaching death; loss of life; death.

Verb

present participle and gerund of die

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 DYING performs as a guess

DYING 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 65.8% of games, misses completely in 34.2%, and leaves about 337 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,075 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 DYING 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.

4.12 Entropy (bits)
337 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
85.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 28% of evaluated openers
1.83 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DYING 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#6,075 Rank among openers
Opening with DYING solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.69 average. It ranks #6,075 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
856
4 guesses
1,226
5 guesses
204
6 guesses
13
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:
IN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
66%
Green tile
22%
All gray
34%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I M Y
D Y I N G

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches DYING in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

DYING can come back 89 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

813 answers
191 answers
156 answers
153 answers
130 answers
101 answers
84 answers
74 answers
60 answers
44 answers
36 answers
31 answers
30 answers
26 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2Y4I1N1G2
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing DYING

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DYING:

34% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
8% chance
Suggested:
SLART
7% chance
Suggested:
SOREL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

34.2%
TARSE 6.44 bits
8.0%
SLART 5.18 bits
6.6%
SOREL 5.32 bits
6.4%
SALET 5.26 bits
5.5%
SLATE 5.08 bits
4.3%
ARGUE 5.38 bits
3.5%
AROSE 5.25 bits
3.1%
CATER 4.72 bits
2.5%
REAST 4.70 bits
1.9%
LATER 4.34 bits

Research on DYING

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

Optimal play

Opening with DYING, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,306 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 DYING can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 DYIHNG.

Rhymes with LYING TYING VYING

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, DYING is a kind of end.

Synonyms DEATH anxious demise last EAGER

Opposites nascent

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DYING sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 43 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 6, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 48 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.

In a sentence

I'm dying to see you.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I'm dying to see it.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).