HOUND
Yes, HOUND was the Wordle answer on April 18, 2023 (Wordle #668).
As an opener, it rules out about 89.6% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /haʊnd/
- Noun
-
A dog, particularly a breed with a good sense of smell developed for hunting other animals.
- Noun
-
Any canine animal.
- Verb
-
To persistently harass doggedly.
“He hounded me for weeks, but I was simply unable to pay back his loan.”
- Verb
-
To urge on against; to set (dogs) upon in hunting.
Alternative forms: hune
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: April 18, 2023 (#668).
See the full page for that puzzle: April 18, 2023 (#668).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How HOUND performs as a guess
HOUND is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 72.3% of games, misses completely in 27.7%, and leaves about 246 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,697 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe HOUND 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How HOUND 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches HOUND in 5 guesses. See the trap-family guide for similar endgames.
Feedback distribution
HOUND can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for HOUND; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing HOUND
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to HOUND.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing HOUND:
Research on HOUND
Game-tree analysis and word research for HOUND, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with HOUND, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,528 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 HOUND can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, HOUND is a kind of dog or villain.
Synonyms dog hunt TRACE heel cad
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- HOUND sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 9, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 74 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
In a sentence
They say it is the cry of the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Yogi Bear drove the Jeep and Huckleberry Hound sat beside him.
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).