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

MILKY

MILKY is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 86.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈmɪlki/

Adjective

Resembling milk in color, consistency, smell, etc.; consisting of milk.

Adjective

Of the black in an image, appearing as dark gray rather than black.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 MILKY performs as a guess

MILKY 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 69.3% of games, misses completely in 30.7%, and leaves about 312 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,907 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 MILKY 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)
312 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
86.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 23% of evaluated openers
1.94 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MILKY 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#9,907 Rank among openers
Opening with MILKY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #9,907 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
780
4 guesses
1,242
5 guesses
266
6 guesses
20
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
1 vowels
Common:
IL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
29%
All gray
31%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I M Y
D I M L Y
M I L K Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches MILKY in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

MILKY can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

728 answers
275 answers
241 answers
177 answers
105 answers
94 answers
84 answers
76 answers
46 answers
43 answers
36 answers
34 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
20 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3I1L1K5Y4
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing MILKY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MILKY:

31% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
12% chance
Suggested:
STRAE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

30.7%
TARSE 6.41 bits
11.6%
STRAE 5.34 bits
10.2%
TRONE 5.63 bits
7.5%
SARED 5.03 bits
4.4%
RONTE 4.90 bits
4.0%
ORATE 5.28 bits
3.5%
SLATE 4.50 bits
3.2%
CARNE 4.92 bits
1.9%
CARSE 4.57 bits
1.8%
RONTE 4.69 bits

Research on MILKY

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

Optimal play

Opening with MILKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,144 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 MILKY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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 MIHLKEE.

Rhymes with SILKY

Related meanings

Synonyms opaque

Opposites CLEAR

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MILKY 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.4 of 5).

In a sentence

The Milky Way is huge.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Many people have never seen the Milky Way.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).