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

FORTS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of fort

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of fort

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it FAWRTS.

Rhymes with SORTS PORTS WARTS TORTS BORTZ

Related meanings

Synonyms fortress garrison

In a sentence

He built forty-eight forts.
© tatoeba.org contributor Source_VOA (CC BY 2.0 FR)
There are many forts in Castile.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use FORTS 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 FORTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FORTS 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 81.0% of games, misses completely in 19.0%, and leaves about 169 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,232 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 FORTS 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.

4.78 Entropy (bits)
169 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FORTS 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#2,232 Rank among openers
Opening with FORTS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #2,232 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
980
4 guesses
1,116
5 guesses
187
6 guesses
12

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ORST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
28%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

FORTS can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

453 answers
254 answers
205 answers
156 answers
115 answers
105 answers
85 answers
82 answers
80 answers
57 answers
55 answers
47 answers
41 answers
39 answers
38 answers
31 answers
31 answers
31 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4O1R1T1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing FORTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FORTS:

19% chance
Suggested:
LIANE
11% chance
Suggested:
LAIDE
9% chance
Suggested:
SPALE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.0% →
LIANE 6.19 bits
10.7% →
LAIDE 5.26 bits
8.6% →
SPALE 5.51 bits
6.5% →
LIANE 5.45 bits
4.8% →
ALINE 5.44 bits
4.4% →
CLADE 4.54 bits
3.6% →
DAINE 4.28 bits
3.4% →
TREAT 4.64 bits
3.4% →
LEANT 4.91 bits
2.4% →
CAGEY 4.42 bits

Research on FORTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with FORTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,668 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #891 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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
FORTS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.0 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).