WHIFF
Yes, WHIFF was the Wordle answer on April 17, 2023 (Wordle #667).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /wɪf//ʍɪf//wəf/
- Noun
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A brief, gentle breeze; a light gust of air; a waft.
- Noun
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A short inhalation or exhalation of breath, especially when accompanied by smoke from a cigarette or pipe.
- Verb
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To carry or convey (something) by, or as by, a whiff or puff of air; to blow, puff, or waft away.
- Verb
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To say (something) with an exhalation of breath.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
The noun is possibly: * partly a variant of Middle English wef, weffe (“bad smell, stench, stink; exhalation; vapour; tendency of something to go bad (?)”) [and other forms], possibly a variant of either: ** waf, waif, waife (“odour, scent”), possibly from waven (“to move to and fro, sway, wave; to stray, wander; to move in a weaving manner; (figuratively) to hesitate, vacillate”), from Old English wafian (“to wave”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *webʰ- (“to braid, weave”); or ** wef (“a…
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it WIHF.
Rhymes with CLIFF STIFF SNIFF GRIFF SKIFF
Related meanings
Synonyms puff SNIFF
In a sentence
Dmitri took a whiff of the food.
I think I've gotten a whiff of coffee: quick, off to the kitchen!
Use WHIFF in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 72.7% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: April 17, 2023 (#667).
See the full page for that puzzle: April 17, 2023 (#667).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →WHIFF in Connections
3 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #1221
Reveal this appearance's category
WHIFF appeared in HINT (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #1059
Reveal this appearance's category
WHIFF appeared in GLIMMER (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #442
Reveal this appearance's category
WHIFF appeared in BAD GOLF SHOTS (blue group).
How WHIFF performs as a guess
WHIFF is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 51.0% of games, misses completely in 49.0%, and leaves about 651 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,535 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.96 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe WHIFF 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How WHIFF 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches WHIFF in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
WHIFF can come back 52 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for WHIFF; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing WHIFF
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to WHIFF.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing WHIFF:
Research on WHIFF
Game-tree analysis and word research for WHIFF, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with WHIFF, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.98 guesses and ranks #14,595 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 4.11 guesses at best and is rank #7,164 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.96, at or below the proven-optimal 3.98, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- WHIFF sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 8, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 38 of 100. Raters found it difficult to picture.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with smell (3.2 of 5).
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).