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

GURLY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Fierce and stormy.

“a gurly wind”

Adjective

Unfriendly, irritable, surly.

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

Etymology

From gurl (“to growl or snarl”) + -y.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use GURLY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.8% 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.

How GURLY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GURLY 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 79.7% of games, misses completely in 20.3%, and leaves about 220 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,126 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 GURLY 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.

4.48 Entropy (bits)
220 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GURLY 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#7,126 Rank among openers
Opening with GURLY left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #7,126 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
53
3 guesses
878
4 guesses
1,157
5 guesses
239
6 guesses
25

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LRU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
33%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

GURLY can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

484 answers
395 answers
262 answers
143 answers
104 answers
74 answers
68 answers
67 answers
59 answers
55 answers
50 answers
39 answers
37 answers
35 answers
35 answers
31 answers
29 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2U1R1L1Y4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing GURLY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GURLY:

20% chance
Suggested:
SAICE
17% chance
Suggested:
IRATE
11% chance
Suggested:
COATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.3% →
SAICE 6.21 bits
16.6% →
IRATE 5.31 bits
11.0% →
COATE 5.39 bits
6.0% →
SATED 4.92 bits
4.4% →
STONE 5.33 bits
3.1% →
SCOTE 5.00 bits
2.9% →
SPATE 4.72 bits
2.8% →
THANE 4.92 bits
2.5% →
PLIER 4.28 bits
2.3% →
CRUET 4.64 bits

Research on GURLY

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

Optimal play

Opening with GURLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,225 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,416 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT).