MUDDY
MUDDY is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈmʌdi/
- Adjective
-
Covered or splashed with, or full of, mud (“wet soil”).
“He slogged across the muddy field.”
- Adjective
-
Of water or some other liquid: containing mud or (by extension) other sediment in suspension; cloudy, turbid.
“The previously limpid water was now muddy as a result of the struggle between the alligator and the wild boar.”
- Verb
-
To cover or splash (someone or something) with mud.
“If you muddy your shoes don’t wear them inside.”
- Verb
-
To make (water or some other liquid) cloudy or turbid by stirring up mud or other sediment.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
The adjective is derived from Late Middle English muddi, moddy, muddy (“covered with or full of mud, muddy”), from mud, mudde (“mud; turbid water”) + -i (suffix forming adjectives). Mud, mudde is possibly borrowed from Middle Dutch modde, and/or Middle Low German modde, mudde, from Proto-Germanic *mud-, *mudra- (“mud”), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *mū-, *mew- (“moist”). The English word is analysable as mud + -y (suffix meaning ‘having the quality of’ forming adjectives).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it MUHDEE.
Rhymes with STUDY BUDDY RUDDY CUDDY DUDDY
Related meanings
Synonyms DIRTY sloppy cloudy SOGGY MURKY wet
Opposites CLEAR CLEAN dry pure
In a sentence
The ground is soft and muddy.
The water was muddy after the storm.
Use MUDDY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 74.5% 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
No completed appearanceNo appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.
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 →MUDDY 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 #1018
Reveal this appearance's category
MUDDY appeared in OBFUSCATE (yellow group).
How MUDDY performs as a guess
MUDDY 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 51.9% of games, misses completely in 48.1%, and leaves about 608 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,057 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.90 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 MUDDY 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 MUDDY 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 MUDDY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
MUDDY can come back 57 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 MUDDY; 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 MUDDY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to MUDDY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing MUDDY:
Research on MUDDY
Game-tree analysis and word research for MUDDY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with MUDDY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.88 guesses and ranks #13,452 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 MUDDY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.90; proven optimal play reaches 3.88. 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- MUDDY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B2); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 4, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 82 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.2 of 5).
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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).