TIMID
TIMID is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈtɪmɪd/
- Adjective
-
Lacking in courage or confidence.
“John's a very timid person. I doubt he'll be brave enough to face his brother.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it TIHMIHD.
Related meanings
Synonyms shy cautious FAINT unsure fearful intimidated
Opposites bold BRAVE
In a sentence
He is a timid man.
You know how timid she is.
Use TIMID in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 84.1% 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 →How TIMID performs as a guess
TIMID 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 64.7% of games, misses completely in 35.3%, and leaves about 379 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,469 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 TIMID 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 TIMID 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 TIMID in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
TIMID can come back 73 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 TIMID; 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 TIMID
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to TIMID.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing TIMID:
Research on TIMID
Game-tree analysis and word research for TIMID, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with TIMID, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,468 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 TIMID can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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
- TIMID sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 8, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 42 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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).