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

HORSY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈhɔːsi//ˈhɔɹsi/

Adjective

Of, relating to, or similar to horses.

Adjective

Involved in breeding or riding horses.

Noun

A child's term or name for a horse.

Noun

A game where a child rides on the back of another, who is on all fours.

Alternative forms: horsey, horsie

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 HORSY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HORSY 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 81.6% of games, misses completely in 18.4%, and leaves about 174 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,254 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 HORSY 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.

4.79 Entropy (bits)
174 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 71% of evaluated openers
1.16 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HORSY 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#4,254 Rank among openers
Opening with HORSY solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,254 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
936
4 guesses
1,134
5 guesses
206
6 guesses
20
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

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
36%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

HORSY can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

437 answers
316 answers
187 answers
141 answers
138 answers
105 answers
103 answers
81 answers
46 answers
45 answers
41 answers
40 answers
37 answers
36 answers
36 answers
33 answers
31 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4O1R1S1Y4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing HORSY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HORSY:

18% chance
Suggested:
ALINE
13% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
8% chance
Suggested:
LEANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.4%
ALINE 6.24 bits
13.3%
TRIED 5.35 bits
7.9%
LEANT 5.58 bits
5.9%
ANILE 4.53 bits
5.8%
ALINE 5.38 bits
4.4%
NAICE 5.25 bits
4.3%
ATONE 4.26 bits
3.4%
CLINE 4.73 bits
1.9%
CLOTE 4.08 bits
1.9%
STANE 4.38 bits

Research on HORSY

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

Optimal play

Opening with HORSY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,829 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,959 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 HAWRSEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HORSY 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).