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

GIRLS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɡɝlz//ɡɜːlz/

Noun

plural of girl

Noun

A woman's breasts.

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of girl

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it GURLZ.

Rhymes with CURLS EARLS PERLS

Related meanings

Synonyms miss daughter girlfriend MISSY

Opposites boy

In a sentence

The girls don't like you.
© tatoeba.org contributor BraveSentry (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Do you not like girls?
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use GIRLS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.8% 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.

GIRLS in Connections

1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.

How GIRLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GIRLS 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 85.9% of games, misses completely in 14.1%, and leaves about 148 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,813 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 GIRLS 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.

4.84 Entropy (bits)
148 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GIRLS 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
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#1,813 Rank among openers
Opening with GIRLS left 1 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 3.62 average. It ranks #1,813 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
990
4 guesses
1,118
5 guesses
176
6 guesses
12

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ILRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
27%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

GIRLS can come back 98 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

335 answers
291 answers
219 answers
197 answers
119 answers
86 answers
83 answers
82 answers
67 answers
65 answers
63 answers
60 answers
53 answers
53 answers
48 answers
35 answers
32 answers
29 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2I1R1L1S1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing GIRLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GIRLS:

14% chance
Suggested:
COATE
12% chance
Suggested:
COATE
9% chance
Suggested:
STANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.1% →
COATE 6.04 bits
12.2% →
COATE 5.48 bits
9.2% →
STANE 5.59 bits
8.3% →
COATE 5.46 bits
5.0% →
CONTE 5.30 bits
3.6% →
CADET 4.74 bits
3.5% →
SPATE 4.96 bits
3.4% →
POTAE 4.73 bits
2.8% →
ATONE 4.52 bits
2.7% →
CONTE 4.44 bits

Research on GIRLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GIRLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,925 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,083 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
GIRLS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 148 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 4, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 87 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.5 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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).