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

FELLY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈfɛli//ˈfɛl.li/

Noun

The rim of a wooden wheel, supported by the spokes.

Noun

Any of the several curved segments that constitute the rim.

Adverb

Fiercely, harshly.

Alternative forms: felloe, fellick, felk

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

Etymology

From Middle English fely, felow, felowe, felwe, felȝe, from Old English felg, from Proto-Germanic *felgō (compare Saterland Frisian feelge, Dutch velg, German Felge), from Proto-Indo-European *pl̥ǵʰ- (compare Polish płoza (“sliding iron”), Old Church Slavonic пльзати (plĭzati, “to creep, crawl”)).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use FELLY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 86.1% 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 FELLY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FELLY 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 74.0% of games, misses completely in 26.0%, and leaves about 331 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,233 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.85 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 FELLY 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.

3.85 Entropy (bits)
331 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FELLY 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.

3.85 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#13,233 Rank among openers
Opening with FELLY left 3 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 3.85 average. It ranks #13,233 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
48
3 guesses
666
4 guesses
1,252
5 guesses
351
6 guesses
34

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
EL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
35%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

FELLY can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

620 answers
541 answers
200 answers
168 answers
127 answers
122 answers
36 answers
34 answers
32 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4E1L1L1Y4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing FELLY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FELLY:

26% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
23% chance
Suggested:
STAIR
8% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.0% →
TRAIN 6.16 bits
22.7% →
STAIR 5.50 bits
8.4% →
ROAST 4.76 bits
7.0% →
SNAIL 5.03 bits
5.3% →
RANSE 4.72 bits
5.1% →
AINEE 4.50 bits
1.5% →
SAINT 4.13 bits
1.4% →
TRADE 3.94 bits
1.3% →
REATE 3.70 bits
1.3% →
FRONT 4.35 bits

Research on FELLY

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

Optimal play

Opening with FELLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,907 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 FELLY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.85, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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
FELLY 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).