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

BETHS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of beth

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 BETHS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BETHS 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 80.5% of games, misses completely in 19.5%, and leaves about 191 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,746 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 BETHS 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.

4.55 Entropy (bits)
191 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 55% of evaluated openers
1.40 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BETHS 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#6,746 Rank among openers
Opening with BETHS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,746 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
814
4 guesses
1,269
5 guesses
199
6 guesses
12
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
1 vowels
Common:
EST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
23%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

BETHS can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

462 answers
354 answers
153 answers
139 answers
116 answers
109 answers
96 answers
95 answers
92 answers
58 answers
53 answers
44 answers
41 answers
38 answers
36 answers
34 answers
32 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3E1T1H4S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing BETHS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BETHS:

19% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
15% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
6% chance
Suggested:
LAIRY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.5%
CAROL 5.86 bits
14.9%
ARIEL 5.21 bits
6.4%
LAIRY 4.96 bits
5.9%
FAINT 5.22 bits
4.9%
PAIRE 4.98 bits
4.6%
LAREE 4.49 bits
4.0%
SAINT 4.46 bits
4.0%
ARENE 4.75 bits
3.9%
COALY 4.78 bits
2.4%
ROANY 4.74 bits

Research on BETHS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BETHS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,325 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 BETHS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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 BEHTHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BETHS is a kind of letter.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BETHS 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).