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

GARTH

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɡɑː(ɹ)θ/

Noun

A grassy quadrangle surrounded by cloisters.

Noun

A close; a yard; a croft; a garden.

“a cloister garth”

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 GARTH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GARTH 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 82.7% of games, misses completely in 17.3%, and leaves about 149 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,324 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 GARTH 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.

4.95 Entropy (bits)
149 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 81% of evaluated openers
1.00 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GARTH 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#1,324 Rank among openers
Opening with GARTH solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.61 average. It ranks #1,324 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
982
4 guesses
1,146
5 guesses
156
6 guesses
10
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:
ART

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
31%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

GARTH can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

411 answers
242 answers
187 answers
151 answers
115 answers
110 answers
83 answers
81 answers
71 answers
67 answers
60 answers
42 answers
42 answers
39 answers
38 answers
38 answers
35 answers
35 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2A1R1T1H4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing GARTH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GARTH:

17% chance
Suggested:
MOILE
10% chance
Suggested:
SOLED
8% chance
Suggested:
SLICE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.3%
MOILE 5.96 bits
10.2%
SOLED 4.96 bits
7.9%
SLICE 5.41 bits
6.4%
SIENT 5.37 bits
4.8%
BRACE 4.62 bits
4.6%
SONLY 4.77 bits
3.5%
NOISE 4.64 bits
3.4%
SLADE 4.80 bits
3.0%
SINCE 5.18 bits
2.8%
LUNGE 4.73 bits

Research on GARTH

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

Optimal play

Opening with GARTH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,381 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 GARTH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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 GAHRTH.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GARTH 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.

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).