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

HOAGY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of hoagie.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it HOHGEE.

Rhymes with BOGEY

Related meanings

Synonyms hero sub bomber submarine WEDGE torpedo

Use HOAGY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.8% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

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

How HOAGY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HOAGY 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 79.6% of games, misses completely in 20.4%, and leaves about 196 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,667 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 HOAGY 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.

4.51 Entropy (bits)
196 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HOAGY 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,667 Rank among openers
Opening with HOAGY solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,667 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
48
3 guesses
858
4 guesses
1,179
5 guesses
256
6 guesses
13

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
40%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

HOAGY can come back 89 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

486 answers
286 answers
199 answers
180 answers
135 answers
118 answers
117 answers
82 answers
80 answers
57 answers
54 answers
47 answers
41 answers
35 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4O1A1G2Y4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing HOAGY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HOAGY:

20% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
12% chance
Suggested:
RATEL
8% chance
Suggested:
TRICE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.4% →
SLIER 6.09 bits
12.0% →
RATEL 5.57 bits
8.3% →
TRICE 5.21 bits
7.6% →
SLICE 5.05 bits
5.7% →
SIDLE 4.61 bits
4.9% →
SIREN 4.74 bits
4.9% →
TRICE 5.54 bits
3.4% →
CAROL 4.50 bits
3.4% →
SATED 3.94 bits
2.4% →
STILE 5.01 bits

Research on HOAGY

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

Optimal play

Opening with HOAGY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,561 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 HOAGY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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
HOAGY 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).