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

GUSSY

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

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɡʌsi//ˈɡʊsi/

Verb

To dress up or decorate in a showy way.

Noun

The vagina of a woman.

Noun

The anus of a woman, especially but not exclusively a trans woman.

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 GUSSY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GUSSY 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 60.2% of games, misses completely in 39.8%, and leaves about 451 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,651 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe GUSSY 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.

3.54 Entropy (bits)
451 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 8% of evaluated openers
2.40 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GUSSY 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
99.87% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#12,651 Rank among openers
Opening with GUSSY left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.83 average. It ranks #12,651 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
697
4 guesses
1,273
5 guesses
316
6 guesses
28
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
1 vowels
Common:
SU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
60%
Green tile
32%
All gray
40%

Feedback distribution

GUSSY can come back 65 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

945 answers
264 answers
212 answers
152 answers
113 answers
83 answers
81 answers
62 answers
54 answers
36 answers
36 answers
35 answers
33 answers
23 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2U1S1S1Y4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing GUSSY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GUSSY:

40% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
11% chance
Suggested:
PARTE
9% chance
Suggested:
TALER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

39.8%
ARIEL 6.13 bits
11.1%
PARTE 5.35 bits
8.9%
TALER 4.86 bits
6.4%
TRONE 5.40 bits
4.8%
RAINE 5.44 bits
3.5%
ROATE 5.09 bits
3.4%
REACT 4.76 bits
2.6%
IRADE 5.02 bits
2.3%
STUNK 4.13 bits
1.5%
PARLE 4.74 bits

Research on GUSSY

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

Optimal play

Opening with GUSSY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.89 guesses and ranks #13,628 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 GUSSY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.89, 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 GUHSEE.

Rhymes with FUSSY HUSSY

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GUSSY 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.

In a sentence

She needed to gussy up; so she put on her best clothes.
© tatoeba.org contributor Swalis (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).