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

HAPPY

Yes, HAPPY was the Wordle answer on November 27, 2022 (Wordle #526).

As an opener, it rules out about 84.0% of possible answers.

Open Solver with HAPPY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈhæpi//ˈhapɪj//ˈhape/

Adjective

Having a feeling arising from a consciousness of well-being or of enjoyment; enjoying good of any kind, such as comfort, peace, or tranquillity; blissful, contented, joyous.

“Music makes me feel happy.”

Adjective

Experiencing the effect of favourable fortune; favored by fortune or luck; fortunate, lucky.

Verb

Often followed by up: to become happy; to brighten up, to cheer up.

Verb

Often followed by up: to make happy; to brighten, to cheer, to enliven.

Alternative forms: happie

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 27, 2022 (#526).

See the full page for that puzzle: November 27, 2022 (#526).

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

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How HAPPY performs as a guess

HAPPY 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 67.3% of games, misses completely in 32.7%, and leaves about 379 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,409 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.86 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.

H___Y H in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position H__P_ H in the 1st position and P in the 4th position _A__Y A in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe HAPPY 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.

3.59 Entropy (bits)
379 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
84.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 9% of evaluated openers
2.36 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HAPPY 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.

3.86 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,409 Rank among openers
Opening with HAPPY solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.86 average. It ranks #13,409 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
641
4 guesses
1,277
5 guesses
363
6 guesses
26
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:
A

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
67%
Green tile
30%
All gray
33%

Example solver route

R O A T E
N A S A L
D U C H Y
H A P P Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches HAPPY in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

HAPPY can come back 70 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

777 answers
415 answers
182 answers
179 answers
168 answers
121 answers
66 answers
61 answers
52 answers
39 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4A1P3P3Y4
Total: 15 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Try next

RIONE ALERT DROLE TRICE CLINE URITE

Strategy after playing HAPPY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HAPPY:

33% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
17% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
8% chance
Suggested:
DROLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

32.7% →
RIONE 6.01 bits
17.5% →
ALERT 5.57 bits
7.7% →
DROLE 4.77 bits
7.5% →
TRICE 5.60 bits
7.1% →
CLINE 4.70 bits
5.1% →
URITE 5.32 bits
2.8% →
CORSE 4.63 bits
2.6% →
SLANT 3.33 bits
2.2% →
SLANE 4.69 bits
1.6% →
SOLER 4.29 bits

Research on HAPPY

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

Optimal play

Opening with HAPPY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,171 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.04 guesses at best and is rank #6,671 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.86, at or below the proven-optimal 3.87, 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 HAPEE.

Related meanings

Synonyms glad willing golden bright laughing blessed

Opposites unhappy unfortunate unwilling

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HAPPY sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 224 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Learner level
Appears in beginner learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level A1); among the first words English learners study.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 3, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 58 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (4.5 of 5).

In a sentence

I was happy with that.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I was happy with you.
© tatoeba.org contributor maaster (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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).