GULAG
GULAG is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈɡuːlɑɡ//-læɡ//ɡuːˈlɑk/
- Noun
-
A prison camp, especially one used to hold political prisoners.
- Noun
-
A place where, or political system in which, people with dissident views are routinely oppressed.
- Verb
-
To compel (someone) into a forced labour camp or a similar place of confinement or exile.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
Borrowed from Russian ГУЛА́Г (GULÁG), the acronym of Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й (Glávnoje upravlénije ispravítelʹno-trudovýx lageréj, “Chief Administration of Corrective-Labor Camps”), the government agency in charge of the Soviet Union’s network of forced labour camps, which was established in 1918 and formally abolished in 1960: see GULAG.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it GYOOLAG.
In a sentence
Tom managed to escape from a gulag in Siberia.
Fyodor spent ten years in a gulag.
Use GULAG in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 86.5% 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
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
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.
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.
See the public dataThank you. Your result now helps describe this puzzle.
See what the public sample says →How GULAG performs as a guess
Wordle accepts GULAG 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 71.6% of games, misses completely in 28.4%, and leaves about 321 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,729 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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 GULAG 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 GULAG 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
Feedback distribution
GULAG can come back 71 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 GULAG; 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 GULAG
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to GULAG.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing GULAG:
Research on GULAG
Game-tree analysis and word research for GULAG, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with GULAG, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #13,016 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.99 guesses at best and is rank #6,013 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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
- GULAG sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
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).