Unused Wordle Words

What Counts as an Unused Wordle Word?

An unused Wordle word is a word from Wordle's original answer list that has never been the daily answer. The list had 2,315 words when Wordle launched in 2021; the count at the top of this page shows how many of them are still waiting, counted through yesterday's puzzle.

We build the list from the official answers the New York Times serves for every Wordle since #0 on June 19, 2021. Each day, the newest answer is crossed off the moment its puzzle becomes yesterday's. Today's answer stays on the list until tomorrow, so you can use the unused Wordle words to narrow your guesses without the page giving the answer away.

"Unused" means unused as an answer. Any five-letter word in Wordle's much larger dictionary can still be played as a guess.

Where the Original Wordle Answer List Comes From

Wordle has always had two word lists: a big list of words you're allowed to guess, and a short list of 2,315 common words that can be the answer. Josh Wardle shipped both inside the game in 2021, which is how players first worked out what was left.

The New York Times bought Wordle in early 2022. For a while nothing changed: every answer up to March 2023 came from that original list. Since November 7, 2022, the official answer data names an editor, Tracy Bennett, and the answers have slowly become an editorial choice rather than a fixed sequence.

The NYT also took six words off the list in 2022 (AGORA, FIBRE, LYNCH, PUPAL, SLAVE and WENCH). None of them had been used, and none will be, so they are left out of the count here.

That is why this page talks about the "original list". It is the only published, fixed list of possible answers, and it is still where most answers come from. The same 2,315 words also make up the answer list of Quordle, so our past Quordle answers draw from the same pool.

Wordle Repeats Answers Now

On February 2, 2026, Wordle #1689 was CIGAR, the very first Wordle answer from June 2021. It was the first repeated answer in the game's history, and others have followed at a rate of about three or four a month.

The repeats follow a clear pattern so far: 28 of the 30 repeated answers were first used in Wordle's first year, puzzles #0 to #365. The exceptions are SMILE (first used as #830) and SANDY (#1226). Every repeat came at least 524 puzzles after its first use, so a word from last month is still very unlikely.

For solvers, that changes one old habit. Crossing off every past answer used to be a reliable shortcut; now roughly one answer in nine since February has been a repeat. If nothing on the unused list fits your board, think of a word you remember from 2021 or 2022.

New Words the NYT Has Added

The NYT has also used words that were never on the original answer list. The first was GUANO on March 27, 2023 (#646), followed by SNAFU two weeks later.

They were rare at first: 4 in 2023 and 6 in 2024. Then they took off: 19 in 2025 and 48 so far in 2026. In October 2026, 12 of the 31 answers were new words, and only 15 came from the unused Wordle words on the original list.

Most new words are perfectly ordinary, like LASER, ATLAS, SQUID or SUEDE, which is why players rarely noticed. But it does mean the unused list is no longer a complete list of possible answers. Treat it as the most likely pool, not the only one.

How Useful Is the Unused List Now?

Still very useful: since repeats began on February 2, 2026, 207 of 283 Wordle answers (73%) were unused words from the original list. The rest were 46 new words and 30 repeats.

The share has been falling, though. In the autumn of 2026, only about half of the answers came from the unused Wordle words, as new words became more frequent. So the best way to use the list is as a filter, not a guarantee:

• Play your normal opening guesses.
• Enter your green, yellow and grey letters in the filter above.
• If a handful of unused words fit, choose between them first.
• If none fit, the answer is probably a repeat or a new word: switch to the Wordle solver, which uses the full guess dictionary.

Reading the Unused List

The words are grouped by first letter, with a count for each. A few patterns are worth knowing:

• S is by far the biggest group, with 87 of the remaining words, about one in five.
• Some letters are nearly exhausted. There is one Z word left, none starting with X or Y, and only a handful starting with N, Q, U, J and K.
• The leftover words lean unusual: words like BOULE, FICUS, SAVOY and SMOTE are still waiting, while most everyday words have already had their turn.

The letter chart above shows how often each letter appears in what's left. It is a good guide to a second guess once your opener has done its work.

The Leftover Words Are Different

The unused Wordle words are not a random slice of the original list. They lean towards double letters and words ending in Y.

• Double letters: 38% of the unused words have a repeated letter, against 31% of the original-list words already used. Words like PUREE, CREME and BERRY have simply been waiting longer.
• Y at the end: 100 of the 444 unused words end in Y, more than any other last letter. R (53) and E (50) are a long way behind.
• Different openings: ST- and TR- are thinner among the leftovers (1.6% and 1.1% of the unused words, against 2.8% and 1.6% of the whole list), while CR- and SH- are more common than they used to be.

In practice that means a board that refuses to resolve is more likely than usual to hide a doubled letter or a final Y, at least when the answer is one of the unused Wordle words.

Good Guesses Against the Unused List

If you want a guess that splits the remaining words as finely as possible, count how many different colour patterns it can produce against them. We ran every unused word against the whole unused list in November 2026.

SANER came out on top among the unused words themselves: it can show 93 different colour patterns, so whatever the answer, you're left with a small group. PARSE (90) and PASTE (82) follow. Among classic openers, RAISE and SLATE both reach 88 patterns, and RAISE never leaves more than 35 words in a single group.

The exact ranking shifts a little as words are used up, but the lesson holds: an opener with S, A, E and R covers the leftover list best, and a second guess with a Y catches the large group of words that end in one.

Will Wordle Run Out of Words?

No. Even before repeats began, the original list had enough words for years, and repeats plus new words mean Wordle no longer depends on it at all.

At the pace of recent months, between 15 and 26 first uses of original-list words a month, the remaining unused Wordle words would last well over a year, and probably closer to two. Because the NYT now mixes in repeats and new words, that pace is slowing down rather than speeding up.

The question used to have a date attached: with one new word a day and nothing reused, the original list would have run out in 2027. That deadline is gone.

How This List Is Built and Updated

• Answers: the official NYT answer for every Wordle from #0 (June 19, 2021) to yesterday, with its puzzle number. Our numbers match the game's own.
• Original list: the 2,315 answer words that shipped with Wordle in 2021. Every answer before March 27, 2023 is on it.
• Updates: automatic, every day. A word is crossed off once its puzzle is no longer today's, and the repeats and new-word sections update at the same time.
• No predictions: we never show future answers, and the list makes no claim about which word comes next.

Unused Wordle Words FAQ