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

HORST

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /hɔːst/

Noun

A block of the Earth's crust, bounded by faults, that has been raised relative to the surrounding area.

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

Etymology

From German Horst (“heap”). Doublet of hurst.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it HAWRST.

Use HORST in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.9% 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 HORST performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HORST 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 82.0% of games, misses completely in 18.0%, and leaves about 146 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #521 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.58 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 HORST 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.

5.17 Entropy (bits)
146 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HORST 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.

3.58 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#521 Rank among openers
Opening with HORST solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.58 average. It ranks #521 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
72
3 guesses
1,049
4 guesses
1,038
5 guesses
175
6 guesses
20

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ORST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
33%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

HORST can come back 129 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

428 answers
270 answers
136 answers
109 answers
95 answers
92 answers
89 answers
75 answers
63 answers
61 answers
57 answers
51 answers
42 answers
40 answers
36 answers
35 answers
33 answers
31 answers
31 answers
26 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4O1R1S1T1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing HORST

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HORST:

18% chance
Suggested:
ALINE
11% chance
Suggested:
LAIDE
6% chance
Suggested:
ANILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.0% →
ALINE 6.22 bits
11.3% →
LAIDE 5.29 bits
5.7% →
ANILE 5.55 bits
4.6% →
ALINE 5.42 bits
4.0% →
LAIDE 4.43 bits
3.9% →
TITLE 5.31 bits
3.7% →
DAINE 4.26 bits
3.1% →
ALINE 5.02 bits
2.6% →
SLAKE 4.44 bits
2.6% →
CLINE 4.92 bits

Research on HORST

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

Optimal play

Opening with HORST, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #514 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.74 guesses at best and is rank #232 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.58, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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
HORST 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).