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

GOING

Yes, GOING was the Wordle answer on November 19, 2024 (Wordle #1249).

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɡəʊ.ɪŋ//ˈɡuː.ɪŋ/ [ˈɡʊw.ɪŋɡ]/ˈɡæn.ɪn/

Verb

present participle and gerund of go

“I'm afraid I must be going.”

Verb

Attending or visiting (a stated event, place, etc.) habitually or regularly.

Noun

A departure.

Noun

The suitability of ground for riding, walking etc.

“The going was very difficult over the ice.”

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: November 19, 2024 (#1249).

See the full page for that puzzle: November 19, 2024 (#1249).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How GOING performs as a guess

GOING 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 67.0% of games, misses completely in 33.0%, and leaves about 338 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,172 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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.

Useful pattern pages

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

First-turn measures

All four describe GOING 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.

3.90 Entropy (bits)
338 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
85.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 18% of evaluated openers
2.05 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GOING 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#11,172 Rank among openers
Opening with GOING left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,172 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
731
4 guesses
1,277
5 guesses
284
6 guesses
16
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
2 vowels
Common:
INO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
67%
Green tile
31%
All gray
33%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S C O L D
B O U G H
G O I N G

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches GOING in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

GOING can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

784 answers
222 answers
205 answers
176 answers
157 answers
125 answers
81 answers
66 answers
60 answers
46 answers
45 answers
33 answers
31 answers
28 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2O1I1N1G2
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing GOING

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GOING:

33% chance
Suggested:
REAST
9% chance
Suggested:
CRATE
9% chance
Suggested:
SALET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

33.0%
REAST 6.33 bits
9.4%
CRATE 5.35 bits
8.6%
SALET 5.18 bits
7.4%
TALER 4.70 bits
6.6%
SLATE 5.10 bits
5.3%
CASER 5.03 bits
3.4%
CANER 4.44 bits
2.8%
LEAST 4.79 bits
2.5%
ARSON 4.55 bits
1.9%
TRAPE 4.54 bits

Research on GOING

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

Optimal play

Opening with GOING, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.85 guesses and ranks #12,556 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.00 guesses at best and is rank #6,210 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.85, 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 GOHIHNG.

Rhymes with OWING

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, GOING is a kind of act or death.

Synonyms release loss leaving passing exit departure

Opposites inactive

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GOING sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 871 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.2 of 5).

In a sentence

Are you not going in?
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
We are going with you.
© 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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).