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

BURSA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbɜːsə//ˈbɝsə/

Noun

Any of the many small fluid-filled sacs located at the point where a muscle or tendon slides across bone. These sacs serve to reduce friction between the two moving surfaces.

Noun

A diverticulum on the cloaca of young birds, which serves as a lymphatic organ and as part of the immune system, but which atrophies as the bird ages.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

From Turkish Bursa, from Ottoman Turkish بورسه (Brusa), from Byzantine Greek Προῦσα (Proûsa), from Ancient Greek Προυσίας (Prousías, “Prusias”) + -α (-a). Doublet of Prusa.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use BURSA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.1% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How BURSA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BURSA 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 83.9% of games, misses completely in 16.1%, and leaves about 164 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,856 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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 BURSA 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.

4.77 Entropy (bits)
164 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BURSA 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#3,856 Rank among openers
Opening with BURSA 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 3.65 average. It ranks #3,856 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
923
4 guesses
1,159
5 guesses
184
6 guesses
23

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ARSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
28%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

BURSA can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

385 answers
296 answers
236 answers
174 answers
152 answers
105 answers
78 answers
73 answers
49 answers
49 answers
49 answers
45 answers
43 answers
41 answers
39 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
29 answers
27 answers
24 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1R1S1A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing BURSA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BURSA:

16% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
12% chance
Suggested:
CLINE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRIED

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.1% →
TOILE 6.02 bits
12.4% →
CLINE 5.59 bits
9.9% →
TRIED 5.27 bits
7.3% →
LEANT 4.55 bits
6.4% →
STILE 5.17 bits
4.4% →
PLATE 4.87 bits
3.3% →
CONTE 5.08 bits
3.1% →
MOILE 4.07 bits
2.1% →
CONTE 4.27 bits
2.1% →
CONTE 4.60 bits

Research on BURSA

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

Optimal play

Opening with BURSA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,138 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.82 guesses at best and is rank #1,892 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BURSA 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).