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

GURUS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɡʊ.ɹuːz//ˈɡuː.ɹuːz//ˈɡʊ.ɹuz/

Noun

plural of guru

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 GURUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GURUS 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 70.8% of games, misses completely in 29.2%, and leaves about 342 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,039 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.84 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 GURUS 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.

3.75 Entropy (bits)
342 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 13% of evaluated openers
2.20 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GURUS 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.

3.84 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#13,039 Rank among openers
Opening with GURUS left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.84 average. It ranks #13,039 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
704
4 guesses
1,213
5 guesses
363
6 guesses
29
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
RSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
22%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

GURUS can come back 70 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

693 answers
413 answers
331 answers
99 answers
98 answers
87 answers
80 answers
79 answers
45 answers
40 answers
37 answers
35 answers
27 answers
25 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2U1R1U1S1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing GURUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GURUS:

29% chance
Suggested:
OLATE
17% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
14% chance
Suggested:
STALE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.2%
OLATE 5.96 bits
17.4%
ARIEL 5.14 bits
13.9%
STALE 5.70 bits
4.2%
LEANT 5.24 bits
4.1%
STOAE 4.97 bits
3.7%
POTAE 4.68 bits
3.4%
CLONE 4.76 bits
3.3%
CLINE 4.18 bits
1.9%
SLANT 4.10 bits
1.7%
ATONE 4.26 bits

Research on GURUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GURUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #13,033 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 #6,095 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.84, 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it GOOROOZ.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, GURUS is a kind of leader or actor.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GURUS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

Yoga gurus promise to show the path to enlightenment.
© tatoeba.org contributor acell (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).