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

HAFTS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of haft

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of haft

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 HAFTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HAFTS 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 76.4% of games, misses completely in 23.6%, and leaves about 215 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,252 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 HAFTS 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.

4.47 Entropy (bits)
215 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 50% of evaluated openers
1.47 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HAFTS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.65 Spread of game lengths
#4,252 Rank among openers
Opening with HAFTS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.65 means those games clustered within about 0.65 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,252 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
878
4 guesses
1,254
5 guesses
164
6 guesses
6
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:
AST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
22%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

HAFTS can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

560 answers
265 answers
188 answers
153 answers
149 answers
86 answers
80 answers
75 answers
74 answers
69 answers
44 answers
44 answers
42 answers
42 answers
38 answers
33 answers
31 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
23 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4A1F4T1S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing HAFTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HAFTS:

24% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
11% chance
Suggested:
LEARN
8% chance
Suggested:
POIRE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.6%
DROLE 6.09 bits
11.2%
LEARN 5.44 bits
7.9%
POIRE 5.49 bits
6.4%
ROUET 5.52 bits
6.3%
MORNE 4.69 bits
3.6%
ROUET 4.66 bits
3.4%
ALERT 4.71 bits
3.2%
CLONE 5.08 bits
3.1%
URINE 4.93 bits
2.9%
CRAPE 4.67 bits

Research on HAFTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with HAFTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,559 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 HAFTS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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 HAFTS.

Rhymes with RAFTS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, HAFTS is a kind of hold.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HAFTS 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.

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).