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

GYRUS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈd͡ʒaɪɹəs/

Noun

A fold or ridge on the cerebral cortex of the brain.

“The sulci and gyri are the grooves and ridges, respectively.”

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 GYRUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GYRUS 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 77.9% of games, misses completely in 22.1%, and leaves about 237 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,210 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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 GYRUS 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.

4.28 Entropy (bits)
237 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 37% of evaluated openers
1.67 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GYRUS 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.

3.74 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#9,210 Rank among openers
Opening with GYRUS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.74 average. It ranks #9,210 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
825
4 guesses
1,182
5 guesses
271
6 guesses
26
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

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
RSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
17%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

GYRUS can come back 84 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

525 answers
363 answers
276 answers
159 answers
129 answers
91 answers
82 answers
57 answers
54 answers
53 answers
51 answers
46 answers
36 answers
31 answers
28 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
21 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2Y4R1U1S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing GYRUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GYRUS:

22% chance
Suggested:
OLATE
15% chance
Suggested:
IRATE
12% chance
Suggested:
STALE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.1%
OLATE 6.03 bits
15.3%
IRATE 5.22 bits
11.6%
STALE 5.71 bits
6.7%
TOILE 4.74 bits
5.4%
CLOTE 5.06 bits
3.8%
STOAE 4.96 bits
3.5%
LIANE 5.36 bits
2.4%
COATE 4.89 bits
2.3%
SAINT 4.40 bits
2.2%
SLANT 4.27 bits

Research on GYRUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GYRUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,642 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #3,930 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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 JYRUHS. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, GYRUS is a kind of structure.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GYRUS 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).