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

BHELS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of bhel

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 BHELS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BHELS 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 82.6% of games, misses completely in 17.4%, and leaves about 186 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,580 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 BHELS 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.

4.59 Entropy (bits)
186 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 58% of evaluated openers
1.35 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BHELS 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,580 Rank among openers
Opening with BHELS left 2 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 3.68 average. It ranks #5,580 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
880
4 guesses
1,196
5 guesses
211
6 guesses
11
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:
ELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
26%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

BHELS can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

414 answers
373 answers
193 answers
162 answers
132 answers
131 answers
96 answers
61 answers
61 answers
42 answers
41 answers
39 answers
39 answers
35 answers
35 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
27 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3H4E1L1S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing BHELS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BHELS:

17% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
16% chance
Suggested:
RAINE
8% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.4%
TRAIN 6.05 bits
15.7%
RAINE 5.25 bits
8.1%
SAINT 5.32 bits
6.8%
FOCAL 4.97 bits
5.6%
REATE 4.74 bits
5.5%
STAIR 4.87 bits
4.0%
TORCH 4.92 bits
2.6%
DALLY 4.12 bits
2.6%
TRADE 4.56 bits
1.8%
CARTE 4.64 bits

Research on BHELS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BHELS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,536 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,343 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, 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 BEHLZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.