MUSTY
Yes, MUSTY was the Wordle answer on May 7, 2024 (Wordle #1053).
As an opener, it rules out about 88.7% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈmʌsti/
- Adjective
-
Affected by dampness or mould; damp, mildewed, mouldy.
- Adjective
-
Having an odour or taste of mould; also (generally), having a stale or unfresh odour or taste.
“musty food musty furniture a musty odour”
- Noun
-
A type of snuff with a musty flavour (adjective sense 2).
- Verb
-
To turn musty (adjective sense 1 or 2); to must.
Alternative forms: musthy
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
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: May 7, 2024 (#1053).
See the full page for that puzzle: May 7, 2024 (#1053).
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 →How MUSTY performs as a guess
MUSTY 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 71.8% of games, misses completely in 28.2%, and leaves about 269 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,391 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 MUSTY 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 MUSTY 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 MUSTY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
MUSTY can come back 91 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 MUSTY; 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 MUSTY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to MUSTY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing MUSTY:
Research on MUSTY
Game-tree analysis and word research for MUSTY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with MUSTY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,702 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 MUSTY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 MUHSTEE.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- MUSTY 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 (4.2 of 5).
In a sentence
It smells musty in here.
It smells musty in this room.
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).