GUILT
GUILT is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ɡɪlt/
- Noun
-
Responsibility for wrongdoing.
- Noun
-
The state of having been found guilty or admitted guilt in legal proceedings.
- Verb
-
To cause someone to feel guilt, particularly in order to influence their behaviour.
“He didn't want to do it, but his wife guilted him into it.”
- Verb
-
To commit offenses; act criminally.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English gilt, gult, from Old English gylt (“guilt, sin, offense, crime, fault”), of obscure origin. Possibly related with Old English ġieldan (“to pay, requite, punish”) (whence yield), from Proto-West Germanic *guldijā (whence Middle High German gülte (“debt, fee, financial duty”), Middle Low German gülde, German Gülte), from Proto-West Germanic *geldan (“to pay for”), from Proto-Germanic *geldaną (“to pay”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it GIHLT.
Rhymes with BUILT QUILT SPILT STILT
Related meanings
Opposites innocence
In a sentence
Was it guilt by association?
I felt a lot of guilt.
Use GUILT in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 92.0% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →GUILT in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #613
Reveal this appearance's category
GUILT appeared in ___ TRIP (purple group).
How GUILT performs as a guess
GUILT is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 77.1% of games, misses completely in 22.9%, and leaves about 190 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,261 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe GUILT 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How GUILT 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches GUILT in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
GUILT can come back 113 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for GUILT; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing GUILT
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to GUILT.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing GUILT:
Research on GUILT
Game-tree analysis and word research for GUILT, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with GUILT, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #3,038 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 GUILT can 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
- GUILT sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 13 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 8, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 33 of 100. Raters found it difficult to picture.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (3.2 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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).