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

BURQA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbɜː.kə//ˈbɝ.kə/

Noun

An enveloping Central Asian garment which covers the whole body, incorporating a netted screen to cover the eyes, chiefly worn by women in fundamentalist denominations of Islam to observe sartorial hijab (the practice of wearing concealing clothing in front of adult men after the age of puberty).

Noun

Another kind of garment worn by Muslim women (of any denomination) to observe sartorial hijab:

Alternative forms: burka, burkha, burqua, boorka

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 BURQA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BURQA 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 75.7% of games, misses completely in 24.3%, and leaves about 298 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,086 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.85 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 BURQA 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.

3.82 Entropy (bits)
298 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 15% of evaluated openers
2.13 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BURQA 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.

3.85 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,086 Rank among openers
Opening with BURQA left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.85 average. It ranks #13,086 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
694
4 guesses
1,235
5 guesses
358
6 guesses
25
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:
ARU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
23%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

BURQA can come back 63 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

578 answers
440 answers
296 answers
216 answers
125 answers
90 answers
69 answers
61 answers
56 answers
42 answers
39 answers
36 answers
36 answers
26 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1R1Q10A1
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 18 points

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

Strategy after playing BURQA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BURQA:

24% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
19% chance
Suggested:
SLANE
12% chance
Suggested:
TRIED

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.3%
TOILE 6.09 bits
18.5%
SLANE 5.55 bits
12.5%
TRIED 5.22 bits
9.1%
TRACE 4.73 bits
5.3%
STONE 5.21 bits
3.8%
SONLY 4.04 bits
2.9%
SHOTE 4.73 bits
2.6%
SCOTE 4.58 bits
2.4%
CLONE 4.56 bits
1.8%
MATEY 4.03 bits

Research on BURQA

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

Optimal play

Opening with BURQA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.88 guesses and ranks #13,357 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.01 guesses at best and is rank #6,325 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.85, at or below the proven-optimal 3.88, 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 BUURKUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BURQA is a kind of garment.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BURQA 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.

In a sentence

Say no to the burqa!
© tatoeba.org contributor Rovo (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The burqa is a choice.
© tatoeba.org contributor Vanilla (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).