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

POLLY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A prefect at Uppingham School in Rutland, England.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

Nickname for Mary, created by rhyming with Molly.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it PAHLEE.

Rhymes with HOLLY MOLLY JOLLY DOLLY FOLLY

In a sentence

Polly resisted the temptation to pass comment on Adrian's recently acquired French accent.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use POLLY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 85.5% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No 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.

How POLLY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts POLLY 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 66.6% of games, misses completely in 33.4%, and leaves about 346 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,277 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 POLLY 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.

3.94 Entropy (bits)
346 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POLLY 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#11,277 Rank among openers
Opening with POLLY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,277 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
757
4 guesses
1,219
5 guesses
301
6 guesses
29

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
67%
Green tile
36%
All gray
33%

Feedback distribution

POLLY can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

796 answers
241 answers
229 answers
174 answers
148 answers
99 answers
59 answers
52 answers
49 answers
43 answers
38 answers
32 answers
29 answers
29 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1L1L1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing POLLY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POLLY:

33% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
10% chance
Suggested:
SANER
10% chance
Suggested:
RAISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

33.4% →
TIARE 6.30 bits
10.1% →
SANER 5.30 bits
9.6% →
RAISE 5.34 bits
7.3% →
RANSE 4.74 bits
6.2% →
CRUET 4.92 bits
4.2% →
STARE 5.58 bits
2.5% →
FARCE 3.89 bits
2.2% →
SAUTE 4.74 bits
2.1% →
CARNE 4.92 bits
1.8% →
DRONE 3.51 bits

Research on POLLY

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

Optimal play

Opening with POLLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,523 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with POLLY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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
POLLY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).