The word puzzle about –gry

Every year or so a word puzzle does the rounds.
It says something along the lines of:
There are three words in the English language ending in –gry. What are they?
Most people interested in word puzzles think of angry and hungry quite quickly. It’s the third word that stumps them.

I’ll give you five minutes to think about it.


The problem is, this puzzle has been around since 1975 at least. And in 1975 there were still plenty of people who knew some older words. Words no longer in common usage. Words like meagry (now meager) and ymagry (now imagery).

So some versions of the puzzle are now trick questions.
“There are three words in the English language ending in –gry. Two of them are angry and hungry. What is the third word?”

Read it again.

Yes, the third word is “what”.

Another variation is: There are three words in the English language that end with the letters g, r, y. One is angry. Another is hungry. Everyone knows what the third word means and uses it every day. What is it?

Give up?
The answer is energy. The puzzle doesn’t say the last three letters have to be in that order.

I’m sure you can now think of even more variations on the puzzle. Have fun playing with words.

Helen Woodall
helen.woodall@gmail.com

Helen is available to line edit and/ or content edit fiction and non-fiction. Rates on application.