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

WHIGS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of whig

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of whig

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it WIHGZ.

Rhymes with TWIGS RIGGS BIGGS FRIGS

In a sentence

What're the Whigs called nowadays?
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use WHIGS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 85.7% 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 WHIGS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WHIGS 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 67.7% of games, misses completely in 32.3%, and leaves about 342 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,494 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 WHIGS 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.

3.90 Entropy (bits)
342 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WHIGS 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#9,494 Rank among openers
Opening with WHIGS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,494 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
766
4 guesses
1,283
5 guesses
242
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
IS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
23%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

WHIGS can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

771 answers
313 answers
238 answers
130 answers
117 answers
116 answers
60 answers
54 answers
51 answers
47 answers
42 answers
39 answers
36 answers
30 answers
29 answers
25 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4H4I1G2S1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing WHIGS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WHIGS:

32% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
13% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
10% chance
Suggested:
RATEL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

32.3% →
ALTER 6.11 bits
13.1% →
ROATE 5.62 bits
10.0% →
RATEL 5.34 bits
5.5% →
CARTE 5.41 bits
4.9% →
CRANE 4.85 bits
4.9% →
GLARE 5.44 bits
2.5% →
DROLE 4.86 bits
2.3% →
PALET 4.20 bits
2.1% →
STOAE 4.39 bits
2.0% →
CARLE 4.26 bits

Research on WHIGS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WHIGS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,904 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 WHIGS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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
WHIGS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).