Possible answer Not used yet F tier for first-turn info

PUDGY

PUDGY is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 81.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpʌd͡ʒi/

Adjective

Fat, overweight (pertaining particularly to children), plump; chubby.

“The pudgy child had a difficult time running the mile.”

Alternative forms: pudsy

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 PUDGY performs as a guess

PUDGY 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 60.0% of games, misses completely in 40.0%, and leaves about 434 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,104 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 PUDGY 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.

3.77 Entropy (bits)
434 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
81.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 14% of evaluated openers
2.18 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PUDGY 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#8,104 Rank among openers
Opening with PUDGY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #8,104 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
801
4 guesses
1,283
5 guesses
213
6 guesses
12
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
1 vowels
Common:
U

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
60%
Green tile
30%
All gray
40%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I M Y
D O I N G
P U D G Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches PUDGY in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

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

949 answers
169 answers
156 answers
149 answers
126 answers
119 answers
80 answers
75 answers
48 answers
37 answers
36 answers
34 answers
31 answers
29 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3U1D2G2Y4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing PUDGY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PUDGY:

40% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
7% chance
Suggested:
TALER
7% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

40.0%
TARSE 6.31 bits
7.1%
TALER 4.85 bits
6.6%
SLART 5.24 bits
6.3%
ARIEL 5.57 bits
5.3%
TRONE 5.47 bits
5.0%
STALE 5.30 bits
3.4%
SAINE 5.10 bits
3.2%
REACT 4.80 bits
2.0%
RAILE 4.43 bits
1.6%
RAILE 4.54 bits

Research on PUDGY

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

Optimal play

Opening with PUDGY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,885 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.91 guesses at best and is rank #4,349 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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 PUHJEE.

Rhymes with FUDGY

Related meanings

Synonyms fat

Opposites thin

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PUDGY sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.4 of 5).

In a sentence

Tom is a little pudgy.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He isn't as pudgy as he used to be.
© tatoeba.org contributor CH (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).