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

BUTES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Proper noun

plural of Bute

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

Use BUTES 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

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 BUTES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BUTES 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 164 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,128 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe BUTES 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.

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

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BUTES 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
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#4,128 Rank among openers
Opening with BUTES left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,128 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
76
3 guesses
857
4 guesses
1,234
5 guesses
174
6 guesses
12

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ESTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
31%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

BUTES can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

427 answers
285 answers
166 answers
150 answers
135 answers
110 answers
93 answers
90 answers
70 answers
62 answers
52 answers
47 answers
41 answers
40 answers
39 answers
37 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3U1T1E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing BUTES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BUTES:

18% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
12% chance
Suggested:
LEARE
7% chance
Suggested:
RAINY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.0%
CAROL 6.00 bits
12.0%
LEARE 5.44 bits
7.0%
RAINY 4.36 bits
6.3%
SCALP 5.00 bits
5.7%
TRAIN 5.29 bits
4.6%
PAIRE 4.69 bits
3.9%
PEARE 4.74 bits
3.8%
STAIR 4.47 bits
2.9%
CLARY 4.22 bits
2.6%
CLONE 4.53 bits

Research on BUTES

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

Optimal play

Opening with BUTES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #3,826 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with BUTES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, 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
BUTES 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).