PALSY
PALSY is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈpɔːlzi//ˈpælzi/
- Noun
-
Complete or partial muscle paralysis of a body part, often accompanied by a loss of feeling and uncontrolled body movements such as shaking.
- Verb
-
To paralyse, either completely or partially.
- Adjective
-
Chummy, friendly.
- Noun
-
Mate, chum.
Alternative forms: palsie
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English palesie, from Anglo-Norman paralisie, parleisie et al., from Latin paralysis, from Ancient Greek παράλυσις (parálusis, “palsy”), from παραλύω (paralúō, “to disable on one side”), from παρα- (para-, “beside”) + λύω (lúō, “loosen”). Doublet of paralysis.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it PAWLZEE.
Related meanings
Synonyms paralysis
In a sentence
My dad has recently got a cerebral palsy.
My dad has recently been diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
Use PALSY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% 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 →How PALSY performs as a guess
PALSY 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 78.9% of games, misses completely in 21.1%, and leaves about 178 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,757 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 PALSY 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 PALSY 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 PALSY in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
PALSY can come back 119 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 PALSY; 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 PALSY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PALSY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PALSY:
Research on PALSY
Game-tree analysis and word research for PALSY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PALSY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,135 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #794 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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
- PALSY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
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).