NIFTY
Yes, NIFTY was the Wordle answer on September 12, 2026 (Wordle #1911).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈnɪfti/
- Adjective
-
Good, smart; useful or beneficial, often in an impressively clever way.
“a nifty trick for reducing your household energy bill”
- Adjective
-
Stylish.
“nifty gear”
- Noun
-
A possibly risqué comic story or anecdote.
- Noun
-
A trick.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From *nift + -y. First element is of unknown origin. Possibly theatrical slang, as a shortened, altered form of Magnificat. Alternatively, perhaps a special use of US regional niffed (“put off, peeved”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it NIHFTEE.
Rhymes with FIFTY
Related meanings
Synonyms GREAT old keen neat cracking BULLY
Opposites bad
In a sentence
That was a nifty way of doing it.
Use NIFTY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 89.0% 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: September 12, 2026 (#1911).
See the full page for that puzzle: September 12, 2026 (#1911).
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 →NIFTY in Connections
2 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #415
Reveal this appearance's category
NIFTY appeared in PEACHY KEEN (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #137
Reveal this appearance's category
NIFTY appeared in EXCELLENT, IN OLD SLANG (green group).
How NIFTY performs as a guess
NIFTY 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 73.2% of games, misses completely in 26.8%, and leaves about 262 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,068 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 NIFTY 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 NIFTY 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 NIFTY in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
NIFTY can come back 90 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 NIFTY; 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 NIFTY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to NIFTY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing NIFTY:
Research on NIFTY
Game-tree analysis and word research for NIFTY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with NIFTY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,642 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #3,913 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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
- NIFTY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.4 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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).