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

HENNY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with HENNY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈhɛni/

Noun

Synonym of hinny (cross between a stallion and a she-ass)

Noun

Alternative spelling of honey.

Adjective

Resembling or characteristic of a hen.

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 HENNY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HENNY 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 78.1% of games, misses completely in 21.9%, and leaves about 289 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,051 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.85 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__N_ H in the 1st position and N in the 4th position _E__Y E in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe HENNY 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.

3.93 Entropy (bits)
289 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 20% of evaluated openers
2.01 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HENNY 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.

3.85 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#13,051 Rank among openers
Opening with HENNY left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.85 average. It ranks #13,051 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
677
4 guesses
1,262
5 guesses
325
6 guesses
41
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:
EN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
36%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

HENNY can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

536 answers
521 answers
216 answers
159 answers
124 answers
101 answers
93 answers
91 answers
72 answers
40 answers
37 answers
32 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4E1N1N1Y4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

ARISE TRAIL SOLAR COAST LATER STAIR

Strategy after playing HENNY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HENNY:

23% chance
Suggested:
ARISE
22% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
9% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.6% →
ARISE 5.30 bits
21.9% →
TRAIL 6.13 bits
9.1% →
SOLAR 4.78 bits
6.7% →
COAST 5.37 bits
5.2% →
LATER 4.64 bits
4.3% →
STAIR 4.46 bits
3.9% →
TRAIN 5.05 bits
3.8% →
ARIEL 4.45 bits
3.0% →
TARSE 4.88 bits
1.7% →
SLART 4.14 bits

Research on HENNY

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

Optimal play

Opening with HENNY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,871 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 HENNY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.85, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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 HEHNEE. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HENNY sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).