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

BORTZ

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Diamond of inferior quality, commonly used for drill tips; abrasive diamond powder; bort.

Alternative forms: boart, bort

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 BORTZ performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BORTZ 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 73.4% of games, misses completely in 26.6%, and leaves about 265 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,901 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

First-turn measures

All four describe BORTZ 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.

4.12 Entropy (bits)
265 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 28% of evaluated openers
1.83 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BORTZ 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,901 Rank among openers
Opening with BORTZ left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #9,901 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
775
4 guesses
1,246
5 guesses
270
6 guesses
15
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:
ORT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
28%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

BORTZ can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

631 answers
299 answers
238 answers
141 answers
120 answers
109 answers
99 answers
83 answers
79 answers
63 answers
52 answers
43 answers
37 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
23 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3O1R1T1Z10
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 17 points

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

Strategy after playing BORTZ

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BORTZ:

27% chance
Suggested:
SLANE
13% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
10% chance
Suggested:
SIENT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.6%
SLANE 6.24 bits
12.6%
ARIEL 5.11 bits
10.0%
SIENT 5.53 bits
5.9%
SLANE 5.26 bits
5.1%
CLADE 4.56 bits
4.6%
TREAT 4.74 bits
4.2%
CRANE 4.56 bits
3.5%
SAUCE 4.99 bits
3.3%
SHAPE 4.87 bits
2.7%
ALINE 5.02 bits

Research on BORTZ

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

Optimal play

Opening with BORTZ, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,483 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 #4,053 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, 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

One syllable Say it BAWRTS.

Rhymes with SORTS PORTS FORTS WARTS TORTS

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BORTZ 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).