5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

TOUGH

Yes, TOUGH was the Wordle answer on March 21, 2023 (Wordle #640).

As an opener, it rules out about 89.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with TOUGH Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /tʌf//tɐf//tʊf/

Adjective

Of a material, strong and resilient; sturdy.

“The tent, made of tough canvas, held up to many abuses.”

Adjective

Of food, difficult to cut or chew.

“To soften a tough cut of meat, the recipe suggested simmering it for hours.”

Interjection

Used to indicate lack of sympathy

“If you don't like it, tough!”

Noun

A person who obtains things by force; a thug or bully.

“They were doing fine until they encountered a bunch of toughs from the opposition.”

Alternative forms: tuff

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: March 21, 2023 (#640).

See the full page for that puzzle: March 21, 2023 (#640).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How TOUGH performs as a guess

TOUGH 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 73.0% of games, misses completely in 27.0%, and leaves about 243 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,187 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

T___H T in the 1st position and H in the 5th position T__G_ T in the 1st position and G in the 4th position _O__H O in the 2nd position and H in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in TOUGH.

First-turn measures

All four describe TOUGH 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.

4.47 Entropy (bits)
243 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
89.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 50% of evaluated openers
1.48 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TOUGH 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#5,187 Rank among openers
Opening with TOUGH solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #5,187 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
919
4 guesses
1,136
5 guesses
228
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
OTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
29%
All gray
27%

Example solver route

R O A T E
C U M I N
D O U B T
T O U G H

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches TOUGH in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

TOUGH can come back 96 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

640 answers
221 answers
203 answers
130 answers
126 answers
102 answers
93 answers
67 answers
59 answers
58 answers
45 answers
40 answers
31 answers
30 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
26 answers
26 answers
23 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1O1U1G2H4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

RAILE SALET CRANE MARLE SILER SACRE

Strategy after playing TOUGH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TOUGH:

27% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
9% chance
Suggested:
SALET
9% chance
Suggested:
CRANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.0% →
RAILE 6.16 bits
9.3% →
SALET 5.75 bits
8.6% →
CRANE 5.32 bits
5.5% →
MARLE 4.77 bits
5.3% →
SILER 4.92 bits
4.3% →
SACRE 5.33 bits
3.9% →
RAILE 5.25 bits
2.8% →
RAINE 4.91 bits
2.5% →
PLORE 4.38 bits
2.4% →
PLACE 4.72 bits

Research on TOUGH

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

Optimal play

Opening with TOUGH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,955 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 TOUGH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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 TUHF.

Rhymes with STUFF ROUGH BLUFF FLUFF SNUFF

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TOUGH is a kind of fighter or criminal.

Synonyms bad hard hood punk BULLY problematic

Opposites tender good easy comfortable

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TOUGH sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 59 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 B2); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 42 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.

In a sentence

This is a tough one.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
That was a tough one.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).