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

MUSKY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 83.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈmʌs.ki/

Adjective

Resembling or characteristic of musk, especially in scent.

Noun

muskellunge

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 MUSKY performs as a guess

MUSKY 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 63.4% of games, misses completely in 36.6%, and leaves about 399 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,875 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.81 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 MUSKY 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.

3.74 Entropy (bits)
399 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
83.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 13% of evaluated openers
2.21 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MUSKY 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.

3.81 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,875 Rank among openers
Opening with MUSKY solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.81 average. It ranks #11,875 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
721
4 guesses
1,266
5 guesses
307
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:
SU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
63%
Green tile
27%
All gray
37%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I M Y
M U S H Y
M U S K Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches MUSKY in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

MUSKY can come back 71 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

870 answers
307 answers
194 answers
139 answers
90 answers
82 answers
82 answers
65 answers
61 answers
38 answers
38 answers
37 answers
34 answers
30 answers
29 answers
23 answers
20 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3U1S1K5Y4
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing MUSKY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MUSKY:

37% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
13% chance
Suggested:
STARE
8% chance
Suggested:
TRODE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

36.6%
ARIEL 6.17 bits
12.9%
STARE 5.60 bits
8.2%
TRODE 4.84 bits
5.9%
TRONE 5.45 bits
3.8%
ARIEL 5.23 bits
3.5%
CARLE 5.16 bits
3.5%
TRICE 4.75 bits
2.7%
SHART 4.42 bits
2.6%
NOIRE 4.84 bits
1.6%
SLANT 4.15 bits

Research on MUSKY

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

Optimal play

Opening with MUSKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,386 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 MUSKY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.81, 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it MUHSKEE.

Rhymes with HUSKY

Related meanings

Synonyms fragrant

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MUSKY 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 smell (4.0 of 5).

In a sentence

The juice concentrate had a musky smell.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The basement always smelt musky.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (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).