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

BOULT

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

Alternative form of bolt (“to sift”).

Noun

Obsolete form of bolt.

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 BOULT performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BOULT 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 77.8% of games, misses completely in 22.2%, and leaves about 189 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,585 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 BOULT 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.

4.78 Entropy (bits)
189 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 70% of evaluated openers
1.17 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BOULT 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,585 Rank among openers
Opening with BOULT solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.61 average. It ranks #1,585 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
71
3 guesses
991
4 guesses
1,086
5 guesses
193
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
2 vowels
Common:
LOTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
37%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

BOULT can come back 113 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

528 answers
200 answers
194 answers
178 answers
122 answers
106 answers
98 answers
79 answers
49 answers
45 answers
44 answers
39 answers
38 answers
32 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
26 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3O1U1L1T1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing BOULT

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BOULT:

22% chance
Suggested:
RAISE
8% chance
Suggested:
TARTE
8% chance
Suggested:
RAISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.2%
RAISE 6.09 bits
8.4%
TARTE 5.60 bits
8.2%
RAISE 5.35 bits
7.5%
CRANE 5.59 bits
5.1%
SIREN 4.98 bits
4.5%
RANCE 4.67 bits
4.1%
ARISE 5.24 bits
3.3%
MAISE 4.80 bits
2.1%
AROSE 4.20 bits
1.9%
CRANE 4.91 bits

Research on BOULT

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

Optimal play

Opening with BOULT, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,899 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 BOULT can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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 BOWLT. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BOULT sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).