HAUNT
Yes, HAUNT was the Wordle answer on July 26, 2025 (Wordle #1498).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /hɔːnt//hɔnt//hɑnt/
- Verb
-
To inhabit or to visit frequently (most often used in reference to ghosts).
“A couple of ghosts haunt the old, burnt-down house.”
- Verb
-
To make uneasy, restless.
“The memory of his past failures haunted him.”
- Noun
-
A place at which one is regularly found; a habitation or hangout.
“The shopping mall is a popular haunt of the local teenagers in this town.”
- Noun
-
A lair or feeding place of animals.
Alternative forms: hant, ha'nt, haint, harnt
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English haunten (“to reside, inhabit, use, employ”), from Old French hanter (“to inhabit, frequent, resort to”), from Old Northern French hanter (“to go back home, frequent”), from Old Norse heimta (“to bring home, fetch”) or/and from Old English hāmettan (“to bring home; house; cohabit with”); both from Proto-Germanic *haimatjaną (“to house, bring home”), from Proto-Germanic *haimaz (“village, home”), from Proto-Indo-European *ḱóymos (“village”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it HAWNT.
Rhymes with CONTE TAUNT GAUNT JAUNT DAUNT
Related meanings
Synonyms GHOST repair resort frequent STALK hangout
In a sentence
It might come back and haunt you.
It will haunt you for the rest of your life.
Use HAUNT in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 93.5% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: July 26, 2025 (#1498).
See the full page for that puzzle: July 26, 2025 (#1498).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →HAUNT in Connections
2 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #721
Reveal this appearance's category
HAUNT appeared in LOCAL WATERING HOLE (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #393
Reveal this appearance's category
HAUNT appeared in SPEND TIME AT (blue group).
How HAUNT performs as a guess
HAUNT is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 81.1% of games, misses completely in 18.9%, and leaves about 156 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,602 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe HAUNT 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How HAUNT 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches HAUNT in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
HAUNT can come back 109 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for HAUNT; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing HAUNT
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to HAUNT.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing HAUNT:
Research on HAUNT
Game-tree analysis and word research for HAUNT, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with HAUNT, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,404 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 HAUNT can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- HAUNT sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
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.