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

WAGYU

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with WAGYU Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈwæɡ.juː//ˈwɑːɡ.juː//ˈwæ.ɡuː/

Noun

Any of several Japanese breeds of cattle genetically predisposed to intense marbling and to producing a high percentage of oleaginous unsaturated fat.

Noun

Beef from such cattle.

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 WAGYU performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WAGYU 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 73.4% of games, misses completely in 26.6%, and leaves about 304 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,491 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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.

_A__U A in the 2nd position and U in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe WAGYU 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.

3.79 Entropy (bits)
304 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 14% of evaluated openers
2.16 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WAGYU 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#12,491 Rank among openers
Opening with WAGYU solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.83 average. It ranks #12,491 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
679
4 guesses
1,323
5 guesses
305
6 guesses
14
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:
AU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
19%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

WAGYU can come back 60 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

631 answers
411 answers
264 answers
165 answers
160 answers
80 answers
72 answers
61 answers
61 answers
51 answers
46 answers
42 answers
42 answers
39 answers
29 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1G2Y4U1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Try next

SLIER CRATE CRUET RONTE SOREL RIONE

Strategy after playing WAGYU

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WAGYU:

27% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
17% chance
Suggested:
CRATE
11% chance
Suggested:
CRUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.6% →
SLIER 6.05 bits
17.3% →
CRATE 5.50 bits
11.1% →
CRUET 5.34 bits
7.0% →
RONTE 4.92 bits
6.7% →
SOREL 4.74 bits
3.4% →
RIONE 5.14 bits
3.0% →
SLART 3.48 bits
2.6% →
SLART 3.43 bits
2.6% →
SOREL 4.83 bits
2.1% →
SERAL 4.40 bits

Research on WAGYU

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

Optimal play

Opening with WAGYU, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,926 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.99 guesses at best and is rank #6,070 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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 WAYJOO. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WAGYU 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.

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).