PICKY
Yes, PICKY was the Wordle answer on December 25, 2021 (Wordle #189).
As an opener, it rules out about 84.5% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈpɪki/
- Adjective
-
Fussy; particular; demanding to have things just right.
“I am very picky about the way my kitchen is laid out.”
- Adjective
-
Of food or a meal: consisting of various small items from which the diner can pick and choose.
“picky bits”
- Noun
-
A picture.
Alternative forms: piccy
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: December 25, 2021 (#189).
See the full page for that puzzle: December 25, 2021 (#189).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.
See the public dataThank you. Your result now helps describe this puzzle.
See what the public sample says →How PICKY performs as a guess
PICKY 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 65.2% of games, misses completely in 34.8%, and leaves about 367 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,619 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 PICKY 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 PICKY 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 PICKY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
PICKY can come back 74 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 PICKY; 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 PICKY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PICKY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PICKY:
Research on PICKY
Game-tree analysis and word research for PICKY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PICKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,354 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,583 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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 PIHKEE.
Related meanings
Synonyms particular FUSSY
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- PICKY 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.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B2); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
In a sentence
Why are you so picky?
Some people are very picky.
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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS.