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

HUFFY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 73.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈhʌfi/

Adjective

Angry, annoyed, indignant or irritated.

Adjective

Easily offended; thin-skinned or touchy.

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 HUFFY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HUFFY 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 51.4% of games, misses completely in 48.6%, and leaves about 636 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,593 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.97 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 HUFFY 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.

2.94 Entropy (bits)
636 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
73.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 1% of evaluated openers
3.01 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HUFFY 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.

3.97 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#14,593 Rank among openers
Opening with HUFFY 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 3.97 average. It ranks #14,593 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
25
3 guesses
560
4 guesses
1,258
5 guesses
476
6 guesses
33
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
1 vowels
Common:
U

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
51%
Green tile
25%
All gray
49%

Feedback distribution

HUFFY can come back 49 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1154 answers
249 answers
224 answers
199 answers
106 answers
89 answers
46 answers
34 answers
34 answers
32 answers
19 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
4 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4U1F4F4Y4
Total: 17 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing HUFFY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HUFFY:

49% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
10% chance
Suggested:
SARED
9% chance
Suggested:
CRATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

48.6%
ARIEL 6.11 bits
10.5%
SARED 4.89 bits
9.4%
CRATE 5.71 bits
8.4%
STONE 5.29 bits
4.5%
STIRE 4.90 bits
3.7%
ARIEL 5.45 bits
1.9%
MARLE 3.11 bits
1.4%
RAILE 4.48 bits
1.4%
CORSE 4.08 bits
1.3%
REATE 4.56 bits

Research on HUFFY

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

Optimal play

Opening with HUFFY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.98 guesses and ranks #14,598 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.13 guesses at best and is rank #7,251 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.97, at or below the proven-optimal 3.98, 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 HUHFEE.

Rhymes with BUFFY PUFFY MUFFY

Related meanings

Synonyms mad sore touchy feisty ANGRY sensitive

Opposites insensitive

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HUFFY sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).