guessable

Guessable is an English adjective meaning capable of being guessed. It describes information, outcomes, or items that a person could reasonably determine or infer given the available clues, context, or patterns. The word is formed from the verb guess plus the suffix -able, and is commonly used across everyday language as well as technical writing to express a relative ease of guessing.

In ordinary usage, a puzzle or question is described as guessable when its solution can be arrived at with some effort or common sense without requiring extensive calculation or specialized knowledge. Conversely, a thing that is not guessable is said to be unguessable or hard to guess.

In security and computer contexts, guessability describes the vulnerability of secrets such as passwords, passphrases, or tokens. A guessable credential is one that an attacker could reasonably try using common words, sequences, or patterns, or one that lacks sufficient entropy. Security guidance typically aims to reduce guessability by increasing randomness and complexity, using longer and less predictable inputs.

In linguistics and cognitive science, guessability can refer to how readily a word, sentence, or meaning can be inferred from context, signals, or prior information, and is related to probability and information theory.

Overall, guessability is a relative measure of how easily a target can be determined, inferred, or anticipated based on available cues and prior knowledge.