BELCH
Yes, BELCH was the Wordle answer on October 15, 2021 (Wordle #118).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈbɛltʃ/
- Verb
-
To expel (gas) from the stomach through the mouth; especially, to do so loudly.
- Verb
-
To eject or emit (something) with spasmodic force or noise.
“Thick smoke belched through the funnels of the steamship.”
- Noun
-
An instance of belching; the sound that it makes.
- Noun
-
Malt liquor.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English belchen, from Old English bielċan, from Proto-Germanic *balkijaną, *belkaną, probably ultimately of imitative origin.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it BEHLCH.
Related meanings
Synonyms bubble
In a sentence
Tom let out a belch.
He who has a frog in his throat begins to belch.
Use BELCH in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 91.0% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: October 15, 2021 (#118).
See the full page for that puzzle: October 15, 2021 (#118).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How BELCH performs as a guess
BELCH is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 79.1% of games, misses completely in 20.9%, and leaves about 214 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,019 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe BELCH 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How BELCH 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches BELCH in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
BELCH can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for BELCH; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing BELCH
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BELCH.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BELCH:
Research on BELCH
Game-tree analysis and word research for BELCH, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BELCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,689 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.84 guesses at best and is rank #2,560 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- BELCH 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.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (4.3 of 5).
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).