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

WAVEY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Uncommon form of wavy.

Noun

The snow goose (Chen caerulescens)

Alternative forms: wavy

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

According to one theory, from Cree. An alternative etymology, perhaps a folk etymology, attributes the name to their peculiar, wavy flight.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use WAVEY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.7% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No 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.

How WAVEY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WAVEY 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 80.7% of games, misses completely in 19.3%, and leaves about 222 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,150 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.85 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 WAVEY 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.

4.21 Entropy (bits)
222 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WAVEY 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.

3.85 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,150 Rank among openers
Opening with WAVEY left 1 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 3.85 average. It ranks #13,150 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
670
4 guesses
1,257
5 guesses
355
6 guesses
26

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AE

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
39%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

WAVEY can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

459 answers
339 answers
276 answers
199 answers
173 answers
169 answers
105 answers
68 answers
44 answers
41 answers
40 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1V4E1Y4
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing WAVEY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WAVEY:

19% chance
Suggested:
COURT
14% chance
Suggested:
RINSE
12% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.3% →
COURT 6.03 bits
14.2% →
RINSE 5.25 bits
11.6% →
SLART 5.40 bits
8.3% →
SLART 5.15 bits
7.3% →
SIDER 4.40 bits
7.1% →
SOILY 4.09 bits
4.4% →
CARAT 4.12 bits
2.9% →
SLART 3.36 bits
1.8% →
SETER 3.65 bits
1.7% →
SAULT 3.46 bits

Research on WAVEY

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

Optimal play

Opening with WAVEY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,523 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 WAVEY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.85; proven optimal play reaches 3.82. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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