MOOCH
Yes, MOOCH was the Wordle answer on February 13, 2026 (Wordle #1700).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈmuːt͡ʃ/[ˈmʊu̯t͡ʃ]
- Verb
-
To wander around aimlessly, often causing irritation to others.
- Verb
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To beg, cadge, or sponge; to exploit or take advantage of others for personal gain.
- Noun
-
An aimless stroll.
“Jack wouldn't be arriving for another ten minutes, so I had a mooch around the garden.”
- Noun
-
One who mooches; a moocher.
Alternative forms: mouch
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English moochen, mouchen (“to pretend poverty”), from Old French muchier, mucier, mucer (“to skulk, hide, conceal”), from Frankish *mukkjan (“to hide, conceal oneself”), from Proto-Germanic *mukjaną, *mūkōną (“to hide, ambush”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)mūg-, *(s)mewgʰ- (“swindler, thief”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
Related meanings
Synonyms bum sponge grub
In a sentence
I'm going to mooch a meal off you at your place.
They have children only so they can mooch off welfare.
Use MOOCH in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 80.0% of possible answers.
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: February 13, 2026 (#1700).
See the full page for that puzzle: February 13, 2026 (#1700).
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 →MOOCH in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #999
Reveal this appearance's category
MOOCH appeared in FREELOADER (yellow group).
How MOOCH performs as a guess
MOOCH is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 57.3% of games, misses completely in 42.7%, and leaves about 478 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,096 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 MOOCH 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 MOOCH 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 MOOCH in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
MOOCH can come back 73 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 MOOCH; 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 MOOCH
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to MOOCH.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing MOOCH:
Research on MOOCH
Game-tree analysis and word research for MOOCH, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with MOOCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,621 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.96 guesses at best and is rank #5,514 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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
- MOOCH 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.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.8 of 5).
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); 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).