BOGUS
BOGUS is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
As an opener, it rules out about 87.5% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈbəʊ̯ɡəs/[ˈbəʊ̯ɡəs]/ˈbɵʊ̯ɡəs/
- Adjective
-
Counterfeit or fake; not genuine.
“He was arrested for trying to cash a bogus check at the bank.”
- Adjective
-
Undesirable or harmful.
- Noun
-
A liquor made of rum and molasses.
- Noun
-
Counterfeit money.
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
Not used yetNo past answer date found.
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 BOGUS performs as a guess
Wordle accepts BOGUS 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 70.8% of games, misses completely in 29.2%, and leaves about 296 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,865 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 BOGUS 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 BOGUS 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
Feedback distribution
BOGUS can come back 92 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 BOGUS; 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 BOGUS
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BOGUS.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BOGUS:
Research on BOGUS
Game-tree analysis and word research for BOGUS, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BOGUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,021 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #3,900 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it BOHGUHS.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- BOGUS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
In a sentence
The bonus material was actually bogus.
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).