Він вгадав відповідь.

Вгадав is the past tense, masculine singular form of the verb вгадати.

In this sentence:

• він = he
• вгадав = guessed / guessed correctly

The masculine form is used because він refers to a male person.

Compare:

• він вгадав = he guessed
• вона вгадала = she guessed
• воно вгадало = it guessed
• вони вгадали = they guessed

Вгадати is a perfective verb, so it presents the action as completed and with a result.

That fits this sentence, because the idea is that he did guess it successfully.

The imperfective partner is вгадувати. That would be used for:

• repeated guessing
• the process of guessing
• habitual action

For example:

• Він вгадував відповіді. = He was guessing answers / He used to guess answers.

So він вгадав відповідь means a single completed success.

Usually вгадати means to guess correctly, not just to make a random guess.

So this verb often implies a successful result:

• he got it right
• he guessed the right answer

If you only want to emphasize that someone was making a guess, without saying whether it was correct, Ukrainian may use other wording depending on context.

So a learner should understand вгадав here as something closer to guessed right than just guessed.

Відповідь is in the accusative singular because it is the direct object of the verb вгадав.

He guessed what? → відповідь

For this noun, the accusative singular looks the same as the nominative singular:

• nominative: відповідь
• accusative: відповідь

That is normal for many inanimate nouns in Ukrainian.

Because Ukrainian case endings do not always look different in every noun.

Відповідь is a feminine noun ending in a soft sign, and in the singular its nominative and accusative forms are the same:

• відповідь = subject form
• відповідь = direct object form

So even though the form does not visibly change, its role is still clear from the sentence:

• він is the subject
• відповідь is the object

Yes, it can often be omitted if the context already makes the subject clear.

So Вгадав відповідь. can also mean He guessed the answer.

However, він may be included for:

• clarity
• emphasis
• contrast

One useful thing to remember is that Ukrainian past tense forms show gender and number, but not person as clearly as English pronouns do. So in the past tense, pronouns are sometimes more helpful than in other tenses, especially when the context is not obvious.

Ukrainian has no articles, so there is no separate word for a or the.

That means відповідь can mean:

• an answer
• the answer

Context tells you which one is meant.

In this sentence, the natural English translation is usually the answer, because the situation normally suggests a specific answer.

No, Ukrainian word order is fairly flexible.

Він вгадав відповідь is the most neutral order:

• subject + verb + object

But other orders are possible for emphasis:

• Відповідь він вгадав. = It was the answer that he guessed.
• Він відповідь вгадав. = also possible, with a different rhythm or emphasis

Because Ukrainian uses case and verb forms, word order can be moved around more than in English. Still, the sentence as given is the most straightforward and natural for a learner.

A simple learner-friendly pronunciation guide is:

Він вгадав відповідь
≈ Vin vhah-DAV VID-po-vidʹ

A few important points:

• г in Ukrainian is usually pronounced like a voiced h sound /ɦ/, not like a hard English g
• so вгадав does not sound like Russian-style g
• the stress in вгадав is on the last syllable: вгада́в
• the final soft sign in відповідь means the final consonant is softened

So the sentence may feel unusual at first because of the consonant cluster in вгадав, but it is completely normal in Ukrainian.

The dictionary form is відповідь, which is a feminine noun meaning answer or response.

Some useful forms are:

• nominative singular: відповідь
• genitive singular: відповіді
• dative singular: відповіді
• instrumental singular: відповіддю
• plural nominative: відповіді

So in the sentence Він вгадав відповідь, you are seeing the basic dictionary form, which also happens to be the accusative singular form here.