TANGY
Yes, TANGY was the Wordle answer on January 14, 2022 (Wordle #209).
As an opener, it rules out about 92.4% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈtæŋiː/
- Adjective
-
Having a sharp, pungent flavor.
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 14, 2022 (#209).
See the full page for that puzzle: January 14, 2022 (#209).
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 TANGY performs as a guess
TANGY 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 79.8% of games, misses completely in 20.2%, and leaves about 181 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,917 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 TANGY 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 TANGY 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 TANGY in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
TANGY 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 TANGY; 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 TANGY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to TANGY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing TANGY:
Research on TANGY
Game-tree analysis and word research for TANGY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with TANGY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,001 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.82 guesses at best and is rank #1,954 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.
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it TANJEE. Estimated pronunciation
This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- TANGY 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.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with taste (4.1 of 5).
In a sentence
I prefer tangy cocktails to overly sweet ones.
My dad's tangy barbecue sauce recipe is a well-kept family secret.
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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).