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

PUDDY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 75.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpʊdi/

Noun

Pronunciation spelling of pussy (“cat”).

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 PUDDY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PUDDY 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 53.3% of games, misses completely in 46.7%, and leaves about 574 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,646 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.88 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 PUDDY 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.

3.25 Entropy (bits)
574 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
75.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 3% of evaluated openers
2.70 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PUDDY 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.

3.88 Avg guesses
99.75% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,646 Rank among openers
Opening with PUDDY left 6 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 3.88 average. It ranks #13,646 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
647
4 guesses
1,271
5 guesses
372
6 guesses
25
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
1 vowels
Common:
U

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
53%
Green tile
29%
All gray
47%

Feedback distribution

PUDDY can come back 60 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1109 answers
191 answers
188 answers
140 answers
127 answers
96 answers
82 answers
43 answers
43 answers
34 answers
30 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
23 answers
15 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3U1D2D2Y4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing PUDDY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PUDDY:

47% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
8% chance
Suggested:
TALER
8% chance
Suggested:
STONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

46.7%
TIARE 6.20 bits
8.0%
TALER 4.85 bits
7.9%
STONE 5.25 bits
5.9%
ARIEL 5.54 bits
5.3%
STARE 5.49 bits
4.0%
CARTE 4.72 bits
3.5%
SAINE 5.16 bits
1.8%
RAILE 4.76 bits
1.8%
SLART 3.28 bits
1.4%
LATER 4.85 bits

Research on PUDDY

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

Optimal play

Opening with PUDDY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,958 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 PUDDY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.88; proven optimal play reaches 3.86. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 PUHDEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PUDDY sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).