WILLY
WILLY is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈwɪli/
- Noun
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Alternative form of willow.
- Verb
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To cleanse wool or cotton, etc. with a willy, or willow.
- Adjective
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Willing; favourable; ready; eager.
- Adjective
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Self-willed; willful.
Alternative forms: willie
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
Originally northern British usage, from the 1960s. Probably the simple use of a proper name as a pet name; compare dick, fanny and peter. Unlikely to be a contraction of Latin membrum virile, male member (that is, the penis), a Latin term used in English in the 19th century.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it WIHLEE.
Use WILLY in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 82.7% 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
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →WILLY in Connections
4 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #937
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WILLY appeared in WET ___ (purple group).
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· Puzzle #539
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WILLY appeared in “FREE ___” (purple group).
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· Puzzle #413
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WILLY appeared in NERVOUSNESS, IN THE SINGULAR (blue group).
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· Puzzle #126
Reveal this appearance's category
WILLY appeared in TITLE MOVIE ANIMALS (purple group).
How WILLY performs as a guess
WILLY 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 63.5% of games, misses completely in 36.5%, and leaves about 411 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,375 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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 WILLY 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 WILLY 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 WILLY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
WILLY can come back 74 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 WILLY; 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 WILLY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to WILLY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing WILLY:
Research on WILLY
Game-tree analysis and word research for WILLY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with WILLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #13,098 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 WILLY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- WILLY sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
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).