FERRY
Yes, FERRY was the Wordle answer on December 27, 2021 (Wordle #191).
As an opener, it rules out about 88.5% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈfɛɹi//ˈfeɹi//ˈfɛɾe/
- Verb
-
To carry; transport; convey.
“Trucks plowed through the water to ferry flood victims to safety.”
- Verb
-
To move someone or something from one place to another, usually repeatedly.
“Being a good waiter takes more than the ability to ferry plates of food around a restaurant.”
- Noun
-
A boat or ship used to transport people, smaller vehicles and goods from one port to another, usually on a regular schedule.
“Islanders normally have to queue for half an hour to get on the ferry.”
- Noun
-
A place where passengers are transported across water in such a ship.
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: December 27, 2021 (#191).
See the full page for that puzzle: December 27, 2021 (#191).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.
See the public dataThank you. Your result now helps describe this puzzle.
See what the public sample says →How FERRY performs as a guess
FERRY 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 76.4% of games, misses completely in 23.6%, and leaves about 274 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,836 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.81 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe FERRY 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How FERRY 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches FERRY in 5 guesses. See the trap-family guide for similar endgames.
Feedback distribution
FERRY can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for FERRY; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing FERRY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to FERRY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing FERRY:
Research on FERRY
Game-tree analysis and word research for FERRY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with FERRY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,178 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 FERRY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.81, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, 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 FEHREE.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, FERRY is a kind of boat or transport.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- FERRY sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 10 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 94 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.0 of 5).
In a sentence
What time is the ferry?
Where is that ferry going?
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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).