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

GREYS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of grey

Noun

plural of grey

Noun

Grey trousers and/or jackets worn by prisoners on relatively formal occasions.

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

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

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 GREYS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GREYS 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 85.7% of games, misses completely in 14.3%, and leaves about 149 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,191 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 GREYS 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.

4.69 Entropy (bits)
149 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 64% of evaluated openers
1.26 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GREYS 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#8,191 Rank among openers
Opening with GREYS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #8,191 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
827
4 guesses
1,222
5 guesses
236
6 guesses
20
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:
ERS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
22%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

GREYS can come back 80 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

339 answers
285 answers
177 answers
176 answers
149 answers
130 answers
119 answers
97 answers
64 answers
58 answers
56 answers
54 answers
54 answers
52 answers
48 answers
47 answers
42 answers
41 answers
28 answers
25 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2R1E1Y4S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing GREYS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GREYS:

14% chance
Suggested:
CLOUT
12% chance
Suggested:
ANILE
7% chance
Suggested:
REATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.3%
CLOUT 5.87 bits
12.0%
ANILE 5.33 bits
7.5%
REATE 4.36 bits
7.4%
SLANT 5.16 bits
6.3%
DAILY 4.46 bits
5.5%
CAROL 5.32 bits
5.0%
SLANT 4.81 bits
4.1%
TRAIN 4.28 bits
2.7%
SAULT 4.18 bits
2.4%
BOITE 4.00 bits

Research on GREYS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GREYS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,323 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 GREYS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, 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

One syllable Say it GRAYZ. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, GREYS is a kind of organization or color.

Synonyms gray grizzly old southern neutral intermediate

Opposites YOUNG northern terminal

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GREYS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.4 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; 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).