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

GUSTS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɡʌsts/

Noun

plural of gust

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of gust

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it GUHSTS.

Rhymes with BUSTS DUSTS RUSTS

Related meanings

Synonyms blow BLAST

In a sentence

The wind blew in gusts.
© tatoeba.org contributor fishda (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Gusts of wind and heavy rain struck Scotland on Wednesday.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use GUSTS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 83.7% 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 GUSTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GUSTS 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 64.1% of games, misses completely in 35.9%, and leaves about 389 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,188 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 GUSTS 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.

3.72 Entropy (bits)
389 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
83.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GUSTS 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,188 Rank among openers
Opening with GUSTS left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,188 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
752
4 guesses
1,248
5 guesses
287
6 guesses
24

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
STU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
64%
Green tile
21%
All gray
36%

Feedback distribution

GUSTS can come back 67 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

856 answers
262 answers
251 answers
125 answers
106 answers
95 answers
87 answers
78 answers
68 answers
52 answers
46 answers
27 answers
25 answers
22 answers
19 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2U1S1T1S1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing GUSTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GUSTS:

36% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
11% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
11% chance
Suggested:
PARLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

35.9% →
ARIEL 6.08 bits
11.0% →
ARIEL 5.62 bits
10.5% →
PARLE 5.57 bits
5.2% →
STARE 4.78 bits
4.4% →
RAINE 5.39 bits
4.0% →
CLONE 5.14 bits
3.6% →
CLARY 4.30 bits
3.3% →
FAIRE 4.64 bits
2.9% →
IRONE 5.14 bits
2.2% →
TRONE 4.47 bits

Research on GUSTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GUSTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.85 guesses and ranks #12,710 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 GUSTS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.85, 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
GUSTS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).