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

GARMS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

clothing

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 GARMS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GARMS 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 82.1% of games, misses completely in 17.9%, and leaves about 169 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,201 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe GARMS 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.

4.71 Entropy (bits)
169 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 65% of evaluated openers
1.24 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GARMS 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
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#3,201 Rank among openers
Opening with GARMS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #3,201 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
950
4 guesses
1,155
5 guesses
182
6 guesses
13
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:
ARS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
27%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

GARMS can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

424 answers
258 answers
220 answers
193 answers
125 answers
114 answers
100 answers
78 answers
67 answers
66 answers
58 answers
47 answers
44 answers
31 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2A1R1M3S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing GARMS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GARMS:

18% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
11% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
9% chance
Suggested:
TOILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.9%
TOILE 6.08 bits
10.9%
TRIED 5.25 bits
9.3%
TOILE 5.50 bits
8.1%
CLOTE 5.52 bits
5.3%
TRADE 4.74 bits
4.8%
CONTE 4.74 bits
4.2%
THALE 4.89 bits
3.3%
TOILE 4.81 bits
2.8%
MOILE 4.89 bits
2.8%
SHOTE 4.65 bits

Research on GARMS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GARMS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,696 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 GARMS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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 GAHRMZ.

Rhymes with FARMS HARMS

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GARMS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).