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

CULMS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.3% of possible answers.

Open Solver with CULMS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of culm

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 CULMS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CULMS 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 73.7% of games, misses completely in 26.3%, and leaves about 254 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,920 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

C___S C in the 1st position and S in the 5th position C__M_ C in the 1st position and M in the 4th position _U__S U in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in CULMS.

First-turn measures

All four describe CULMS 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.

4.35 Entropy (bits)
254 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 42% of evaluated openers
1.60 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CULMS 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#2,920 Rank among openers
Opening with CULMS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #2,920 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
954
4 guesses
1,160
5 guesses
176
6 guesses
12
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
1 vowels
Common:
LSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
24%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

CULMS can come back 89 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

625 answers
289 answers
261 answers
107 answers
91 answers
90 answers
87 answers
68 answers
66 answers
61 answers
49 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
29 answers
29 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3U1L1M3S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Try next

IRATE TIARE ORATE TONER TRONE THALE

Strategy after playing CULMS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CULMS:

26% chance
Suggested:
IRATE
12% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
11% chance
Suggested:
TIARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.3% →
IRATE 6.12 bits
12.2% →
TIARE 5.82 bits
11.0% →
TIARE 5.47 bits
4.5% →
TIARE 5.52 bits
3.8% →
ORATE 5.24 bits
3.8% →
TONER 5.36 bits
3.7% →
TRONE 5.28 bits
2.9% →
THALE 4.86 bits
2.8% →
TARGE 4.65 bits
2.6% →
RAILE 4.47 bits

Research on CULMS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CULMS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #5,096 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,316 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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

One syllable Say it KUHLMZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, CULMS is a kind of stem.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CULMS 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); 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).