BURLY
Yes, BURLY was the Wordle answer on July 21, 2023 (Wordle #762).
As an opener, it rules out about 90.3% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈbɜːli//bɝli//bʌrle/
- Adjective
-
Large, well-built, and muscular.
“He’s a big, burly rugby player who works as a landscape gardener.”
- Adjective
-
Great, amazing, unbelievable.
“That goal was burly.”
Alternative forms: bowerly
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
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: July 21, 2023 (#762).
See the full page for that puzzle: July 21, 2023 (#762).
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 BURLY performs as a guess
BURLY is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 78.4% of games, misses completely in 21.6%, and leaves about 230 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,661 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 BURLY 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 BURLY 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
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches BURLY in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
BURLY can come back 97 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 BURLY; 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 BURLY
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BURLY.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BURLY:
Research on BURLY
Game-tree analysis and word research for BURLY, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BURLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,636 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.86 guesses at best and is rank #3,214 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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 BURLEE.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- BURLY 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.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.8 of 5).
In a sentence
Those burly books were really expensive.
She prefers big, burly men.
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).