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

AARGH

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Interjection

Alternative form of argh.

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 AARGH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts AARGH 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 74.6% of games, misses completely in 25.4%, and leaves about 251 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,909 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 AARGH 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.

4.24 Entropy (bits)
251 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 35% of evaluated openers
1.71 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How AARGH 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,909 Rank among openers
Opening with AARGH 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 3.76 average. It ranks #9,909 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
769
4 guesses
1,273
5 guesses
244
6 guesses
24
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
32%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

AARGH can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

604 answers
332 answers
199 answers
142 answers
125 answers
101 answers
79 answers
75 answers
68 answers
67 answers
52 answers
41 answers
40 answers
37 answers
30 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1A1R1G2H4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing AARGH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing AARGH:

25% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
14% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
8% chance
Suggested:
CLEAT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.4%
TOILE 6.14 bits
14.0%
TRIED 5.13 bits
8.4%
CLEAT 5.34 bits
6.0%
SIENT 4.65 bits
5.3%
TRACE 4.57 bits
4.3%
TOISE 5.42 bits
3.3%
TOILE 5.14 bits
3.2%
SUCRE 4.74 bits
2.9%
CLOTE 4.37 bits
2.8%
BLITE 4.79 bits

Research on AARGH

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

Optimal play

Opening with AARGH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,615 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with AARGH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, 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

One syllable Say it AHRG.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
AARGH sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).