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

POGEY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpəʊɡi/

Noun

Government financial assistance, particularly employment insurance.

Noun

A poorhouse, workhouse, welfare office, charity hostel, etc.

Alternative forms: pogie, pogy

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

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 POGEY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts POGEY 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 82.7% of games, misses completely in 17.3%, and leaves about 188 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,316 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 POGEY 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.

4.58 Entropy (bits)
188 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 57% of evaluated openers
1.37 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POGEY 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,316 Rank among openers
Opening with POGEY solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #5,316 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
890
4 guesses
1,190
5 guesses
207
6 guesses
13
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
42%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

POGEY can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

410 answers
379 answers
183 answers
183 answers
157 answers
106 answers
78 answers
67 answers
55 answers
53 answers
47 answers
47 answers
42 answers
39 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
27 answers
24 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1G2E1Y4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing POGEY

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to POGEY.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POGEY:

17% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
16% chance
Suggested:
SLART
8% chance
Suggested:
STAIR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.3%
TRAIL 6.12 bits
16.0%
SLART 5.84 bits
7.7%
STAIR 4.74 bits
7.7%
ARSON 5.15 bits
6.6%
SAINT 4.79 bits
4.5%
SHART 4.60 bits
3.3%
SNARE 4.28 bits
2.8%
DIANE 4.40 bits
2.3%
SLART 5.22 bits
2.2%
SLANT 4.91 bits

Research on POGEY

Game-tree analysis and word research for POGEY, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with POGEY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,808 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 #3,857 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 POHJEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, POGEY is a kind of welfare.

Synonyms dole

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0).