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

SCAFF

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Proper noun

A surname.

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 SCAFF performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SCAFF 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 70.2% of games, misses completely in 29.8%, and leaves about 332 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,823 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe SCAFF 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.

3.67 Entropy (bits)
332 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 11% of evaluated openers
2.28 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SCAFF 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
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#12,823 Rank among openers
Opening with SCAFF solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.84 average. It ranks #12,823 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
35
3 guesses
650
4 guesses
1,351
5 guesses
302
6 guesses
16
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:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
27%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

SCAFF can come back 57 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

708 answers
377 answers
207 answers
199 answers
131 answers
127 answers
87 answers
85 answers
62 answers
56 answers
46 answers
45 answers
26 answers
26 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1C3A1F4F4
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing SCAFF

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SCAFF:

30% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
16% chance
Suggested:
TALER
9% chance
Suggested:
CRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.8%
TOILE 6.02 bits
15.9%
TALER 5.53 bits
8.7%
CRINE 5.30 bits
8.4%
TRINE 5.08 bits
5.5%
RUOTE 5.58 bits
5.3%
TRIDE 5.01 bits
3.7%
FILER 5.10 bits
3.6%
CATER 4.47 bits
2.6%
THALE 3.80 bits
2.4%
TARSE 4.39 bits

Research on SCAFF

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

Optimal play

Opening with SCAFF, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,330 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.00 guesses at best and is rank #6,166 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 3.87, 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

One syllable Say it SKAF.

Rhymes with STAFF LAUGH GRAPH GRAFF CHAFF

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SCAFF 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).