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

MUSSY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 80.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with MUSSY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Having been mussed: messy, rumpled.

Noun

Pronunciation spelling of mercy, representing African-American Vernacular English.

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 MUSSY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MUSSY 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 59.3% of games, misses completely in 40.7%, and leaves about 463 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,413 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.86 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.

M___Y M in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position M__S_ M in the 1st position and S in the 4th position _U__Y U in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe MUSSY 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.

3.55 Entropy (bits)
463 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
80.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 8% of evaluated openers
2.39 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MUSSY 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.

3.86 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#13,413 Rank among openers
Opening with MUSSY left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.86 average. It ranks #13,413 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
680
4 guesses
1,217
5 guesses
384
6 guesses
29
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

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
SU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
59%
Green tile
32%
All gray
41%

Feedback distribution

MUSSY can come back 68 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

967 answers
245 answers
208 answers
151 answers
91 answers
87 answers
83 answers
62 answers
56 answers
35 answers
34 answers
32 answers
32 answers
29 answers
23 answers
23 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3U1S1S1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

ARIEL TIARE TALER TRONE LATER ROATE

Strategy after playing MUSSY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MUSSY:

41% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
10% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
9% chance
Suggested:
TALER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

40.7% →
ARIEL 6.15 bits
10.3% →
TIARE 5.28 bits
8.8% →
TALER 4.80 bits
6.4% →
TRONE 5.43 bits
3.8% →
ARIEL 5.23 bits
3.7% →
LATER 4.77 bits
3.5% →
ROATE 5.14 bits
2.6% →
CARNE 4.89 bits
2.4% →
STUNK 4.17 bits
1.5% →
ALONE 4.49 bits

Research on MUSSY

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

Optimal play

Opening with MUSSY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,302 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 MUSSY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.86, at or below the proven-optimal 3.87, 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 MYOOSEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

Synonyms MESSY

Opposites tidy

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MUSSY 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.

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).