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

JOYED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with JOYED Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

simple past and past participle of joy

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 JOYED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts JOYED 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 78.9% of games, misses completely in 21.1%, and leaves about 257 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,677 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

J___D J in the 1st position and D in the 5th position J__E_ J in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _O__D O in the 2nd position and D in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in JOYED.

First-turn measures

All four describe JOYED 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.

4.00 Entropy (bits)
257 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 23% of evaluated openers
1.95 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How JOYED 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#12,677 Rank among openers
Opening with JOYED solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.83 average. It ranks #12,677 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
662
4 guesses
1,325
5 guesses
309
6 guesses
18
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
2 vowels
Common:
EO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
28%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

JOYED can come back 64 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

500 answers
448 answers
218 answers
198 answers
184 answers
105 answers
86 answers
71 answers
45 answers
44 answers
43 answers
41 answers
40 answers
31 answers
28 answers
24 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

J8O1Y4E1D2
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 17 points

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

Try next

SLANT SLART ARSON STAIR SAINT SHART

Strategy after playing JOYED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing JOYED:

21% chance
Suggested:
SLANT
19% chance
Suggested:
SLART
9% chance
Suggested:
ARSON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.1% →
SLANT 6.13 bits
18.9% →
SLART 5.82 bits
9.2% →
ARSON 5.18 bits
8.3% →
STAIR 4.69 bits
7.8% →
SAINT 4.96 bits
4.4% →
SHART 4.58 bits
3.6% →
SNARE 4.22 bits
3.0% →
GEARE 4.43 bits
1.9% →
LEARE 4.22 bits
1.9% →
SLART 3.46 bits

Research on JOYED

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

Optimal play

Opening with JOYED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,699 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 JOYED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83; proven optimal play reaches 3.82. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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

One syllable Say it JOYD. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, JOYED is a kind of emotion or input.

Synonyms pleasure delight rejoice

Opposites sorrow

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
JOYED 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (4.2 of 5).

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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).