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

RIFFY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 84.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Characterized by a lot of guitar riffs.

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 RIFFY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts RIFFY 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 68.6% of games, misses completely in 31.4%, and leaves about 378 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,302 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.86 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 RIFFY 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.

3.52 Entropy (bits)
378 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 7% of evaluated openers
2.43 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RIFFY 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.

3.86 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#13,302 Rank among openers
Opening with RIFFY left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.86 average. It ranks #13,302 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
669
4 guesses
1,269
5 guesses
357
6 guesses
22
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.45 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
IR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
27%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

RIFFY can come back 61 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

740 answers
451 answers
260 answers
198 answers
100 answers
97 answers
55 answers
55 answers
47 answers
37 answers
36 answers
33 answers
23 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RIFFY:

31% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
19% chance
Suggested:
STOAE
11% chance
Suggested:
SLANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.4%
SLATE 6.37 bits
19.1%
STOAE 5.56 bits
11.0%
SLANE 5.57 bits
8.4%
ALOSE 4.72 bits
4.2%
TRIPE 4.64 bits
4.1%
CLOTE 4.50 bits
2.3%
CRARE 4.23 bits
2.3%
LATER 4.44 bits
2.0%
SAUCE 4.78 bits
1.6%
URATE 4.26 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1I1F4F4Y4
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

The science of RIFFY

What game-tree analysis and word research measure about RIFFY — each figure with what it means.

Optimal play

Opening with RIFFY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.91 guesses — rank #13,952 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.06 guesses at best — rank #6,896 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.86 — at or below the proven-optimal 3.91 only 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) — not the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable — say it RIHFEE. 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.