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

PUNGY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 84.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpʌŋi//ˈpʌŋɡi/

Noun

a type of schooner developed in and peculiar to the Chesapeake Bay region.

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 PUNGY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PUNGY 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 63.6% of games, misses completely in 36.4%, and leaves about 375 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,165 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 PUNGY 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.

3.98 Entropy (bits)
375 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 21% of evaluated openers
1.97 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PUNGY 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#7,165 Rank among openers
Opening with PUNGY left 2 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 3.71 average. It ranks #7,165 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
840
4 guesses
1,249
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
1 vowels
Common:
NU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
64%
Green tile
31%
All gray
36%

Feedback distribution

PUNGY can come back 84 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

865 answers
211 answers
180 answers
131 answers
121 answers
84 answers
72 answers
65 answers
59 answers
54 answers
51 answers
36 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3U1N1G2Y4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing PUNGY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PUNGY:

36% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
9% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
8% chance
Suggested:
TALER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

36.4%
ORATE 6.16 bits
8.9%
ARIEL 5.51 bits
7.6%
TALER 4.94 bits
5.5%
SLATE 5.31 bits
5.1%
STARE 5.49 bits
3.5%
TIARE 5.16 bits
3.0%
CARTE 4.76 bits
2.7%
SOREL 5.04 bits
2.5%
CADIE 4.73 bits
2.3%
STONE 4.00 bits

Research on PUNGY

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

Optimal play

Opening with PUNGY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,478 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 #3,973 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, 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 PUHNJEE. 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.