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

BURRY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 83.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Abounding in burs.

“burry wool”

Adjective

Resembling or characteristic of a bur.

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 BURRY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BURRY 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 65.1% of games, misses completely in 34.9%, and leaves about 384 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,057 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.81 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 BURRY 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.

3.75 Entropy (bits)
384 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
83.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 13% of evaluated openers
2.19 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BURRY 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.

3.81 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#12,057 Rank among openers
Opening with BURRY left 1 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 3.81 average. It ranks #12,057 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
733
4 guesses
1,214
5 guesses
337
6 guesses
23
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

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
RU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
65%
Green tile
36%
All gray
35%

Feedback distribution

BURRY can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

828 answers
350 answers
203 answers
160 answers
88 answers
80 answers
76 answers
75 answers
52 answers
42 answers
33 answers
32 answers
26 answers
24 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1R1R1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing BURRY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BURRY:

35% chance
Suggested:
SLANE
15% chance
Suggested:
NAICE
9% chance
Suggested:
SALET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

34.9%
SLANE 6.25 bits
14.7%
NAICE 5.19 bits
8.6%
SALET 4.91 bits
6.7%
STONE 5.22 bits
3.7%
THANE 4.94 bits
3.4%
SCOTE 4.90 bits
3.2%
GLACE 4.58 bits
3.2%
ALINE 5.07 bits
2.2%
CRUET 4.46 bits
1.8%
SAMEL 2.95 bits

Research on BURRY

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

Optimal play

Opening with BURRY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,421 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 #6,302 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.81, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, 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 BUREE.

Rhymes with WORRY HURRY FURRY MURRY GURRY

Related meanings

Synonyms barbed prickly ARMED

Opposites unarmed

Familiarity and learning

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