Accepted guess Not a possible answer C tier for first-turn info

PHOTY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

We do not have a sourced definition for this word yet.

Check PHOTY on Wiktionary or report a missing entry.

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 PHOTY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PHOTY 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 73.4% of games, misses completely in 26.6%, and leaves about 244 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,516 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe PHOTY 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.

4.42 Entropy (bits)
244 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 47% of evaluated openers
1.53 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PHOTY 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,516 Rank among openers
Opening with PHOTY solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,516 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
890
4 guesses
1,176
5 guesses
216
6 guesses
15
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.45 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
OT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
37%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

PHOTY can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

627 answers
256 answers
209 answers
159 answers
108 answers
80 answers
70 answers
67 answers
66 answers
61 answers
45 answers
37 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
27 answers
25 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PHOTY:

27% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
11% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
9% chance
Suggested:
CANER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.6%
RAILE 6.24 bits
10.8%
ARIEL 5.66 bits
8.9%
CANER 5.35 bits
6.7%
LAIDE 4.79 bits
4.6%
CRANE 4.95 bits
3.4%
ARIEL 5.38 bits
3.0%
ROUET 4.43 bits
2.8%
SLANE 4.91 bits
2.8%
CARLE 4.92 bits
2.6%
RAINE 4.98 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3H4O1T1Y4
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

The science of PHOTY

What game-tree analysis and word research measure about PHOTY — each figure with what it means.

Optimal play

Opening with PHOTY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses — rank #6,136 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.86 guesses at best — rank #3,094 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68 — at or below the proven-optimal 3.72 only 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) — not the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable — say it FOHTEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.