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

DEGUS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of degu

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 DEGUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DEGUS 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 80.2% of games, misses completely in 19.8%, and leaves about 208 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,634 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 DEGUS 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.

4.42 Entropy (bits)
208 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 46% of evaluated openers
1.53 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DEGUS 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,634 Rank among openers
Opening with DEGUS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,634 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
53
3 guesses
808
4 guesses
1,224
5 guesses
251
6 guesses
17
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:
ESU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
20%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

DEGUS can come back 84 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

469 answers
354 answers
227 answers
168 answers
137 answers
129 answers
79 answers
67 answers
67 answers
59 answers
54 answers
53 answers
35 answers
30 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2E1G2U1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing DEGUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DEGUS:

20% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
15% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
10% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.8%
CAROL 6.09 bits
14.9%
ALTER 5.34 bits
9.6%
SLART 5.19 bits
7.1%
SLART 4.93 bits
5.8%
CURLY 4.76 bits
5.4%
LEARE 4.58 bits
3.3%
LAIRY 4.87 bits
2.8%
ROANY 5.02 bits
2.8%
ARIEL 4.70 bits
2.5%
SHUNT 4.14 bits

Research on DEGUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with DEGUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #7,126 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 DEGUS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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 DAYGUHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DEGUS 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.

In a sentence

Degus make lovely pets: they are diurnal and hence are awake when you are.
© tatoeba.org contributor Judith42 (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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).