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

JUDAS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative letter-case form of Judas (“traitor”).

Noun

Alternative letter-case form of Judas (“Judas-hole”).

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 JUDAS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts JUDAS 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 75.1% of games, misses completely in 24.9%, and leaves about 289 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,585 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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 JUDAS 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.

3.82 Entropy (bits)
289 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 15% of evaluated openers
2.12 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How JUDAS 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#12,585 Rank among openers
Opening with JUDAS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.83 average. It ranks #12,585 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
35
3 guesses
685
4 guesses
1,305
5 guesses
306
6 guesses
22
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
2 vowels
Common:
ASU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
19%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

JUDAS can come back 58 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

590 answers
426 answers
255 answers
163 answers
129 answers
116 answers
98 answers
97 answers
67 answers
61 answers
34 answers
31 answers
31 answers
29 answers
26 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

J8U1D2A1S1
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing JUDAS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing JUDAS:

25% chance
Suggested:
RONTE
18% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
11% chance
Suggested:
STIPE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.9%
RONTE 6.03 bits
17.9%
CARLE 5.46 bits
10.7%
STIPE 5.44 bits
6.9%
LEAST 4.83 bits
5.4%
DINER 5.39 bits
4.9%
TRONE 5.33 bits
4.1%
CLOTE 4.83 bits
4.1%
GRICE 4.24 bits
2.8%
BRINE 4.70 bits
2.6%
SHUNT 4.31 bits

Research on JUDAS

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

Optimal play

Opening with JUDAS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,456 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 JUDAS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, 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 JOODUHS.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, JUDAS is a kind of traitor or hole.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
JUDAS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

I'd rather have Judas by my side.
© tatoeba.org contributor Catriona (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Do you believe Judas betrayed Jesus Christ?
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (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).