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

FLUES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /fluːz/

Noun

plural of flue

Noun

Bits of down.

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

Related meanings

Synonyms FLUKE

Use FLUES in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% 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 FLUES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FLUES 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 170 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,163 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 FLUES 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.

4.74 Entropy (bits)
170 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FLUES 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,163 Rank among openers
Opening with FLUES left 2 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,163 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
852
4 guesses
1,197
5 guesses
223
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ELSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
32%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

FLUES can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

429 answers
299 answers
180 answers
152 answers
135 answers
131 answers
98 answers
88 answers
56 answers
51 answers
49 answers
46 answers
43 answers
40 answers
38 answers
35 answers
34 answers
32 answers
27 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4L1U1E1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing FLUES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FLUES:

18% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
13% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
8% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.0% →
TRAIN 6.03 bits
12.5% →
TIARE 5.38 bits
7.6% →
ROAST 5.33 bits
6.4% →
OATER 4.23 bits
5.7% →
LOYAL 5.12 bits
5.5% →
STAIR 4.73 bits
4.1% →
BURNT 4.44 bits
3.7% →
LADLE 4.40 bits
2.3% →
LEANT 3.53 bits
2.1% →
CLANG 4.14 bits

Research on FLUES

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

Optimal play

Opening with FLUES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,047 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 FLUES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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
FLUES 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).