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

BURLS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with BURLS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of burl

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of burl

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 BURLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BURLS 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 82.0% of games, misses completely in 18.0%, and leaves about 191 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,569 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

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

B___S B in the 1st position and S in the 5th position B__L_ B in the 1st position and L in the 4th position _U__S U in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in BURLS.

First-turn measures

All four describe BURLS 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)
191 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 58% of evaluated openers
1.36 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BURLS 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#4,569 Rank among openers
Opening with BURLS left 1 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 3.66 average. It ranks #4,569 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
904
4 guesses
1,164
5 guesses
204
6 guesses
17
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:
LRSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
27%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

BURLS can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

428 answers
346 answers
236 answers
216 answers
91 answers
76 answers
69 answers
66 answers
62 answers
61 answers
59 answers
46 answers
45 answers
37 answers
36 answers
34 answers
31 answers
31 answers
28 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1R1L1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

CANOE CADET STANE COATE STOAE DAINE

Strategy after playing BURLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BURLS:

18% chance
Suggested:
CANOE
15% chance
Suggested:
CADET
10% chance
Suggested:
STANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.0% →
CANOE 6.03 bits
14.6% →
CADET 5.45 bits
9.9% →
STANE 5.56 bits
9.1% →
COATE 5.50 bits
3.8% →
STOAE 4.92 bits
3.2% →
COATE 4.75 bits
2.9% →
DAINE 4.70 bits
2.8% →
THANE 4.65 bits
2.6% →
CADET 4.19 bits
2.6% →
PAISE 4.73 bits

Research on BURLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BURLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,773 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,609 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 BURLZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BURLS is a kind of wood or process.

Synonyms knot

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BURLS 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).