5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess F tier for first-turn info

FUNKY

Yes, FUNKY was the Wordle answer on December 15, 2024 (Wordle #1275).

As an opener, it rules out about 81.0% of possible answers.

Open Solver with FUNKY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /fʌŋki/

Adjective

Offbeat, unconventional or eccentric.

Adjective

Not quite right; of questionable quality; not appropriate to the context.

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

Used once

Past Wordle answer: December 15, 2024 (#1275).

See the full page for that puzzle: December 15, 2024 (#1275).

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

Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.

See the public data

The Observatory retains the selected puzzle, result, rating, optional Hard Mode answer and a random one-puzzle receipt. It stores no answer word, grid, guesses, account, email, IP-derived ID or reusable player identifier.

How verification and withdrawal work

The answer word and timezone are used transiently to verify this page, then discarded. The receipt prevents duplicate submissions and lets this browser withdraw later; anyone with that token can withdraw, so keep browser-data exports private. Read the full privacy details.

How FUNKY performs as a guess

FUNKY 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 59.9% of games, misses completely in 40.1%, and leaves about 452 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,640 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

F___Y F in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position F__K_ F in the 1st position and K in the 4th position _U__Y U in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in FUNKY.

First-turn measures

All four describe FUNKY 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.

3.58 Entropy (bits)
452 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
81.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 9% of evaluated openers
2.37 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FUNKY 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#12,640 Rank among openers
Opening with FUNKY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.83 average. It ranks #12,640 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
691
4 guesses
1,287
5 guesses
318
6 guesses
22
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:
NU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
60%
Green tile
30%
All gray
40%

Example solver route

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

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches FUNKY in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

FUNKY can come back 67 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

953 answers
242 answers
203 answers
159 answers
100 answers
81 answers
76 answers
62 answers
53 answers
47 answers
39 answers
37 answers
31 answers
30 answers
21 answers
20 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4U1N1K5Y4
Total: 15 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Try next

TARSE RAISE TALER TORSE STIRE CADIE

Strategy after playing FUNKY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FUNKY:

40% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
10% chance
Suggested:
RAISE
9% chance
Suggested:
TALER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

40.1% →
TARSE 6.32 bits
10.2% →
RAISE 5.54 bits
8.6% →
TALER 4.92 bits
6.7% →
TORSE 5.45 bits
4.2% →
STIRE 4.84 bits
3.4% →
CADIE 4.83 bits
3.2% →
CARSE 4.88 bits
2.6% →
ARIEL 5.28 bits
2.2% →
STURE 4.17 bits
2.0% →
OATER 4.72 bits

Research on FUNKY

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

Optimal play

Opening with FUNKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,267 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.98 guesses at best and is rank #5,942 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, 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 FUHNGKEE.

Rhymes with HUNKY JUNKY PUNKY

Related meanings

Synonyms foul smelly stinking emotional fearful cowardly

Opposites BRAVE conventional fragrant

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FUNKY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Learner level
Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B2); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 8, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 52 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.

In a sentence

This is a really funky song.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)
If you notice a funky smell in the fridge, investigate and clean it out.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).