SULLY
Yes, SULLY was the Wordle answer on January 20, 2026 (Wordle #1676).
As an opener, it rules out about 86.2% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈsʌli/
- Verb
-
To soil or stain; to dirty.
“He did not wish to sully his hands with gardening.”
- Verb
-
To corrupt or damage.
“She tried to sully her rival’s reputation with a suggestive comment.”
- Noun
-
A blemish.
Alternative forms: sullow
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: January 20, 2026 (#1676).
See the full page for that puzzle: January 20, 2026 (#1676).
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 →How SULLY performs as a guess
SULLY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 67.5% of games, misses completely in 32.5%, and leaves about 328 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,368 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 SULLY 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 SULLY 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 SULLY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SULLY can come back 79 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 SULLY; 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 SULLY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SULLY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SULLY:
Research on SULLY
Game-tree analysis and word research for SULLY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SULLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,483 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with SULLY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, SULLY is a kind of mar or spot.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- SULLY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
In a sentence
I wouldn't want to sully your good name.
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).