HEFTY
Yes, HEFTY was the Wordle answer on December 18, 2024 (Wordle #1278).
As an opener, it rules out about 90.0% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈhɛfti/
- Adjective
-
With heft; heavy, strong, vigorous, mighty, impressive
“He can throw a hefty punch.”
- Adjective
-
Strong; bulky.
“They use some hefty bolts to hold up road signs.”
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
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: December 18, 2024 (#1278).
See the full page for that puzzle: December 18, 2024 (#1278).
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 →How HEFTY performs as a guess
HEFTY 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 80.9% of games, misses completely in 19.1%, and leaves about 237 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,503 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 HEFTY 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 HEFTY 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 HEFTY in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
HEFTY can come back 86 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 HEFTY; 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 HEFTY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to HEFTY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing HEFTY:
Research on HEFTY
Game-tree analysis and word research for HEFTY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with HEFTY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,549 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,182 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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
- HEFTY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
In a sentence
He was offered a hefty amount for the job.
He was slapped with a hefty fine.
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).