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

PUNNY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 80.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PUNNY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpʌni//ˈpʊni//ˈpʌne/

Adjective

Resembling a pun; involving the use of a pun.

Adjective

Fond of puns.

Noun

A punishment.

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 PUNNY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PUNNY 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 58.9% of games, misses completely in 41.1%, and leaves about 463 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,935 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.84 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

P___Y P in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position P__N_ P in the 1st position and N in the 4th position _U__Y U in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in PUNNY.

First-turn measures

All four describe PUNNY 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.

3.57 Entropy (bits)
463 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
80.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 9% of evaluated openers
2.37 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PUNNY 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.

3.84 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#12,935 Rank among openers
Opening with PUNNY left 3 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 3.84 average. It ranks #12,935 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
686
4 guesses
1,271
5 guesses
326
6 guesses
30
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:
NU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
59%
Green tile
35%
All gray
41%

Feedback distribution

PUNNY can come back 68 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

976 answers
202 answers
174 answers
156 answers
128 answers
95 answers
90 answers
71 answers
65 answers
42 answers
38 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3U1N1N1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Try next

ORATE TALER ARIEL STORE STARE IRATE

Strategy after playing PUNNY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PUNNY:

41% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
9% chance
Suggested:
TALER
7% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

41.1% →
ORATE 6.13 bits
8.5% →
TALER 4.92 bits
7.3% →
ARIEL 5.51 bits
6.6% →
STORE 5.34 bits
5.4% →
STARE 5.58 bits
4.0% →
IRATE 4.63 bits
3.8% →
GRATE 4.86 bits
3.0% →
CADIE 4.82 bits
2.7% →
SOREL 5.04 bits
1.8% →
SLART 3.06 bits

Research on PUNNY

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

Optimal play

Opening with PUNNY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.85 guesses and ranks #12,737 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.02 guesses at best and is rank #6,426 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.84, at or below the proven-optimal 3.85, 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 PUHNEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PUNNY 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.

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).