SCARY
SCARY is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈskɛə.ɹi//ˈskɛː.ɹi//ˈskɛɹ.i/
- Adjective
-
Causing fear or anxiety
“The tiger's jaws were scary.”
- Adjective
-
Uncannily striking or surprising.
“Linda changed her hair, and it’s scary how much she looks like her mother.”
- Adverb
-
To a scary extent; scarily.
- Noun
-
Barren land having only a thin coat of grass.
Alternative forms: scarey
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From dialectal English scare (“scraggy”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it SKEHREE.
Rhymes with HARRY MARRY JERRY TERRY PERRY
Related meanings
Synonyms chilling alarming
In a sentence
That was the scary part.
It was a little scary.
Use SCARY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 94.3% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →SCARY in Connections
2 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #764
Reveal this appearance's category
SCARY appeared in DISNEY ANIMATED CHARACTERS PLUS A LETTER (purple group).
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· Puzzle #11
Reveal this appearance's category
SCARY appeared in SPICE GIRLS (purple group).
How SCARY performs as a guess
SCARY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 86.0% of games, misses completely in 14.0%, and leaves about 135 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,411 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe SCARY 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How SCARY 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches SCARY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SCARY can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for SCARY; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing SCARY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SCARY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SCARY:
Research on SCARY
Game-tree analysis and word research for SCARY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SCARY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,233 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,250 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- SCARY sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 23 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 4, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 48 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).