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

ARSED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 96.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɑːst/

Verb

simple past and past participle of arse.

Adjective

Bothered; willing to make an effort.

“I can’t be arsed to get out of bed today.”

Adjective

Having a particular kind of arse

“a big-arsed man”

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 ARSED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ARSED 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 88.7% of games, misses completely in 11.3%, and leaves about 92 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,161 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 ARSED 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.

5.46 Entropy (bits)
92 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 98% of evaluated openers
0.48 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ARSED 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#1,161 Rank among openers
Opening with ARSED left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #1,161 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
86
3 guesses
946
4 guesses
1,147
5 guesses
157
6 guesses
14
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AERS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
35%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

ARSED can come back 118 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

268 answers
175 answers
155 answers
132 answers
96 answers
83 answers
82 answers
80 answers
77 answers
69 answers
64 answers
64 answers
62 answers
46 answers
45 answers
43 answers
42 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
34 answers
30 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1R1S1E1D2
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing ARSED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ARSED:

11% chance
Suggested:
COUNT
7% chance
Suggested:
CANAL
7% chance
Suggested:
TOILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.3%
COUNT 5.75 bits
7.4%
CANAL 5.13 bits
6.5%
TOILE 5.22 bits
5.6%
SPILT 4.90 bits
4.0%
CLAME 4.62 bits
3.5%
TOILE 3.44 bits
3.5%
SLEPT 4.56 bits
3.4%
SHALT 4.73 bits
3.2%
TORCH 5.01 bits
2.9%
CAROL 4.50 bits

Research on ARSED

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

Optimal play

Opening with ARSED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.60 guesses and ranks #188 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 ARSED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.60, 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 AHRST. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ARSED sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).