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

POUFF

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

As an opener, it rules out about 79.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

Alternative form of pouf.

Noun

Alternative form of pouf.

Noun

Alternative form of poof (“homosexual”).

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 POUFF performs as a guess

Wordle accepts POUFF 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 59.1% of games, misses completely in 40.9%, and leaves about 482 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,109 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.91 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 POUFF 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.

3.29 Entropy (bits)
482 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
79.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 4% of evaluated openers
2.65 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POUFF 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.

3.91 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#14,109 Rank among openers
Opening with POUFF left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.91 average. It ranks #14,109 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
19
3 guesses
634
4 guesses
1,272
5 guesses
397
6 guesses
31
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
OU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
59%
Green tile
24%
All gray
41%

Feedback distribution

POUFF can come back 46 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

971 answers
281 answers
195 answers
194 answers
131 answers
89 answers
88 answers
82 answers
37 answers
37 answers
33 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1U1F4F4
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing POUFF

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POUFF:

41% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
12% chance
Suggested:
RANSE
8% chance
Suggested:
SLIER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

40.9%
TIARE 6.16 bits
11.8%
RANSE 5.30 bits
8.2%
SLIER 4.96 bits
8.2%
TALER 4.68 bits
5.5%
ARIEL 5.43 bits
3.7%
ARIEL 5.28 bits
3.7%
SALET 4.97 bits
3.5%
IRATE 5.01 bits
1.6%
TURBO 3.98 bits
1.6%
SHART 3.47 bits

Research on POUFF

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

Optimal play

Opening with POUFF, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.91 guesses and ranks #13,990 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.06 guesses at best and is rank #6,872 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.91, at or below the proven-optimal 3.91, 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

One syllable Say it POWF. 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.