Accepted guess Not a possible answer C tier for first-turn info

WAUGH

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

Alternative form of waff (“to bark”).

Adjective

Insipid; tasteless.

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 WAUGH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WAUGH 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 72.9% of games, misses completely in 27.1%, and leaves about 288 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,333 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe WAUGH 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.

4.05 Entropy (bits)
288 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 25% of evaluated openers
1.90 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WAUGH 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#10,333 Rank among openers
Opening with WAUGH 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 3.77 average. It ranks #10,333 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
786
4 guesses
1,220
5 guesses
291
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:
AU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
28%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

WAUGH can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

643 answers
388 answers
204 answers
181 answers
98 answers
90 answers
78 answers
63 answers
55 answers
55 answers
52 answers
32 answers
31 answers
31 answers
27 answers
25 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1U1G2H4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing WAUGH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WAUGH:

27% chance
Suggested:
SILER
16% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
9% chance
Suggested:
SLYER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.1%
SILER 6.00 bits
16.3%
ALERT 5.56 bits
8.6%
SLYER 4.79 bits
7.6%
SLIER 5.10 bits
4.1%
STIRE 5.63 bits
3.8%
TRONE 4.76 bits
3.3%
TRONE 5.08 bits
2.7%
SOLER 4.91 bits
2.3%
SCARE 4.44 bits
2.3%
TRINE 4.73 bits

Research on WAUGH

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

Optimal play

Opening with WAUGH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #10,967 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #4,987 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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 WAW.

Rhymes with STRAW MACAW HAUGH

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WAUGH sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).