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

EDGES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɛd͡ʒɪz/

Noun

plural of edge

Noun

The fine hairs at the edge of someone's (usually a black woman's) hairline; baby hairs.

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of edge

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

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it EHJUHZ.

Related meanings

Synonyms MARCH border inch BOUND butt boundary

In a sentence

Round off the edges a little.
© tatoeba.org contributor sharptoothed (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He's rough around the edges.
© tatoeba.org contributor Spamster (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use EDGES in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.4% 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 EDGES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts EDGES 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 276 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,213 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 EDGES 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.

4.00 Entropy (bits)
276 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How EDGES 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#11,213 Rank among openers
Opening with EDGES solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,213 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
726
4 guesses
1,293
5 guesses
280
6 guesses
15

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
21%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

EDGES can come back 66 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

627 answers
299 answers
289 answers
156 answers
146 answers
141 answers
94 answers
77 answers
48 answers
39 answers
37 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1D2G2E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing EDGES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing EDGES:

26% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
13% chance
Suggested:
SLART
12% chance
Suggested:
CRATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.3% →
CAROL 6.01 bits
12.5% →
SLART 5.25 bits
12.1% →
CRATE 5.59 bits
6.5% →
SLART 4.88 bits
6.1% →
ROANY 4.18 bits
5.9% →
DRAIN 5.11 bits
3.9% →
ROANY 5.21 bits
3.2% →
TIARE 4.60 bits
2.0% →
LARGE 4.42 bits
1.6% →
LEPER 3.87 bits

Research on EDGES

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

Optimal play

Opening with EDGES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,651 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 EDGES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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
EDGES sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 12 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.2 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).