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

WOFUL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Obsolete spelling of woeful.

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 WOFUL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WOFUL 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 69.0% of games, misses completely in 31.0%, and leaves about 316 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,100 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 WOFUL 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.

3.97 Entropy (bits)
316 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 21% of evaluated openers
1.98 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WOFUL 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#11,100 Rank among openers
Opening with WOFUL solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,100 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
747
4 guesses
1,250
5 guesses
302
6 guesses
13
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:
LOU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
25%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

WOFUL can come back 73 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

737 answers
249 answers
233 answers
204 answers
135 answers
82 answers
70 answers
62 answers
50 answers
46 answers
45 answers
42 answers
35 answers
35 answers
31 answers
24 answers
20 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4O1F4U1L1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing WOFUL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WOFUL:

31% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
10% chance
Suggested:
SAICE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.0%
TARSE 6.34 bits
10.5%
SAICE 5.39 bits
9.8%
TRINE 5.40 bits
8.6%
CURSE 5.11 bits
5.7%
CARET 4.69 bits
3.5%
SANER 4.66 bits
2.9%
TRUCE 4.16 bits
2.6%
FRITE 5.14 bits
2.1%
BLASE 4.13 bits
1.9%
TRICE 4.94 bits

Research on WOFUL

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

Optimal play

Opening with WOFUL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,811 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,549 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it WUHFUHL. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.