Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

HOTLY

HOTLY is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adverb

With great amounts of heat.

Adverb

In a heated manner; intensely or vehemently.

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

Etymology

From Middle English *hotly, *hatliche, from Old English hātlīċe (“ardently, fervently”); equivalent to hot + -ly.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

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

In a sentence

Gay marriage is a hotly contested issue.
© tatoeba.org contributor darinmex (CC BY 2.0 FR)
This is a hotly debated topic in Algeria.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use HOTLY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.2% 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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 HOTLY performs as a guess

HOTLY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 79.4% of games, misses completely in 20.6%, and leaves about 186 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,279 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 HOTLY 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.

4.67 Entropy (bits)
186 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
92.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HOTLY 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
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#4,279 Rank among openers
Opening with HOTLY 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 3.66 average. It ranks #4,279 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
925
4 guesses
1,150
5 guesses
205
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LOT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
34%
All gray
21%

Example solver route

R O A T E
C U M I N
H O T L Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches HOTLY in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

HOTLY can come back 96 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

492 answers
234 answers
226 answers
175 answers
137 answers
101 answers
84 answers
61 answers
59 answers
57 answers
51 answers
49 answers
39 answers
38 answers
36 answers
35 answers
34 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4O1T1L1Y4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing HOTLY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HOTLY:

21% chance
Suggested:
RAISE
10% chance
Suggested:
RAINE
9% chance
Suggested:
RAISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.6% →
RAISE 6.14 bits
9.8% →
RAINE 5.42 bits
9.5% →
RAISE 5.78 bits
7.3% →
CRANE 5.40 bits
5.7% →
DAINE 4.69 bits
4.2% →
CARSE 5.53 bits
3.5% →
RANSE 4.47 bits
2.6% →
TRITE 4.79 bits
2.5% →
BLASE 4.09 bits
2.4% →
SPORT 4.39 bits

Research on HOTLY

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

Optimal play

Opening with HOTLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,893 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 HOTLY can 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HOTLY sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).