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

BORDS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of bord

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 BORDS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BORDS 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 78.5% of games, misses completely in 21.5%, and leaves about 204 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,633 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 BORDS 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)
204 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.4% 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 BORDS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,633 Rank among openers
Opening with BORDS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,633 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
62
3 guesses
895
4 guesses
1,183
5 guesses
201
6 guesses
13
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:
ORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
27%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

BORDS can come back 96 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

510 answers
288 answers
265 answers
111 answers
101 answers
100 answers
83 answers
78 answers
65 answers
64 answers
62 answers
56 answers
36 answers
32 answers
32 answers
27 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3O1R1D2S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing BORDS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BORDS:

21% chance
Suggested:
LIANE
12% chance
Suggested:
STALE
11% chance
Suggested:
PALET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.5%
LIANE 6.21 bits
12.1%
STALE 5.70 bits
11.2%
PALET 5.34 bits
4.7%
ALONE 5.38 bits
4.3%
ANILE 5.32 bits
4.2%
THALE 4.54 bits
3.5%
ATONE 4.29 bits
3.3%
SPATE 4.91 bits
2.7%
DRIED 4.78 bits
2.7%
CAGEY 4.65 bits

Research on BORDS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BORDS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,348 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 BORDS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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 BAWRDZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BORDS 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).