5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer F tier for first-turn info

TUFTY

TUFTY is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

As an opener, it rules out about 79.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with TUFTY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈtʌfti/

Adjective

Having the form of or resembling a tuft (“a bunch of grass, hair, etc., held together at the base”).

Adjective

Covered in or having many tufts.

Noun

The tufted duck (Aythya fuligula).

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

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

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

How TUFTY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TUFTY as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 58.6% of games, misses completely in 41.4%, and leaves about 479 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,588 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.87 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___Y T in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position T__T_ T in the 1st position and T in the 4th position _U__Y U in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe TUFTY 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.

3.47 Entropy (bits)
479 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
79.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 6% of evaluated openers
2.48 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TUFTY 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.

3.87 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,588 Rank among openers
Opening with TUFTY left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.87 average. It ranks #13,588 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
660
4 guesses
1,242
5 guesses
385
6 guesses
26
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

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
TU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
59%
Green tile
31%
All gray
41%

Feedback distribution

TUFTY can come back 65 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

982 answers
255 answers
220 answers
153 answers
89 answers
83 answers
83 answers
56 answers
54 answers
46 answers
39 answers
33 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1U1F4T1Y4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

RAISE REAST SORAL SNORE CARLE ARISE

Strategy after playing TUFTY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TUFTY:

41% chance
Suggested:
RAISE
11% chance
Suggested:
REAST
9% chance
Suggested:
SORAL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

41.4% →
RAISE 6.08 bits
10.7% →
REAST 5.59 bits
9.3% →
SORAL 4.83 bits
6.4% →
SNORE 5.26 bits
3.7% →
CARLE 4.67 bits
3.5% →
ARISE 5.29 bits
3.5% →
NOIRE 5.20 bits
2.4% →
SOARE 4.75 bits
2.3% →
SNORE 4.39 bits
1.9% →
MARLE 2.96 bits

Research on TUFTY

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

Optimal play

Opening with TUFTY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.89 guesses and ranks #13,700 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 TUFTY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.87, at or below the proven-optimal 3.89, 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 TUHFTEE. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TUFTY sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).