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

HEUGH

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A steep crag or cliff, especially one overlooking a river

Noun

A glen with steep, overhanging sides; a cleugh

Alternative forms: heuch

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 HEUGH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HEUGH 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 71.7% of games, misses completely in 28.3%, and leaves about 349 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,845 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.89 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 HEUGH 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.

3.71 Entropy (bits)
349 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 12% of evaluated openers
2.24 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HEUGH 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.

3.89 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,845 Rank among openers
Opening with HEUGH left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.89 average. It ranks #13,845 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
31
3 guesses
645
4 guesses
1,259
5 guesses
387
6 guesses
30
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
2 vowels
Common:
EU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
26%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

HEUGH can come back 56 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

672 answers
533 answers
168 answers
144 answers
91 answers
82 answers
74 answers
74 answers
69 answers
59 answers
56 answers
35 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4E1U1G2H4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing HEUGH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HEUGH:

28% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
22% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR
7% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.3%
TRAIL 5.95 bits
22.5%
SOLAR 5.32 bits
7.1%
SLART 4.87 bits
6.1%
SURLY 4.66 bits
3.8%
ROANY 5.08 bits
3.5%
SLANT 4.84 bits
3.1%
STAIR 4.90 bits
3.1%
TARSE 4.76 bits
2.9%
COAST 4.62 bits
2.5%
SUETE 4.27 bits

Research on HEUGH

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

Optimal play

Opening with HEUGH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.91 guesses and ranks #13,990 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 HEUGH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.89, at or below the proven-optimal 3.91, 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 HYOO. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HEUGH 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).