ITCHY
Yes, ITCHY was the Wordle answer on November 25, 2022 (Wordle #524).
As an opener, it rules out about 89.3% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈɪt͡ʃi/
- Adjective
-
Characterized by itching. (of a condition)
“an itchy rash”
- Adjective
-
Feeling an itching sensation; feeling a need to be scratched. (of a person, animal or body part)
“My nose always gets itchy the moment I put on my face mask.”
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: November 25, 2022 (#524).
See the full page for that puzzle: November 25, 2022 (#524).
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 ITCHY performs as a guess
ITCHY 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 74.3% of games, misses completely in 25.7%, and leaves about 255 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,612 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 ITCHY 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 ITCHY 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 ITCHY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
ITCHY can come back 71 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 ITCHY; 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 ITCHY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to ITCHY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing ITCHY:
Research on ITCHY
Game-tree analysis and word research for ITCHY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with ITCHY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,108 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 ITCHY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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
- ITCHY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 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 5, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 44 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (4.2 of 5).
In a sentence
My head is really itchy.
I have an itchy skin.
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).