KARMA
Yes, KARMA was the Wordle answer on July 2, 2021 (Wordle #13).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /kərm(ə)/[kɐɾm(ɐ)]/kərma/
- Noun
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The sum total of a person's actions, which determine the person's next incarnation in samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth.
- Noun
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A force or law of nature which causes one to reap what one sows; destiny; fate.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
Borrowed from Sanskrit कर्म (kárma), nom.sg. of कर्मन् (kárman, “act, action, performance”); first attested in English in 1785 in a translation of the Bhagavad Gita by Charles Wilkins.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KAHRMUH.
Rhymes with PARMA
In a sentence
Do you believe in karma?
I don't believe in karma.
Use KARMA in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 86.6% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: July 2, 2021 (#13).
See the full page for that puzzle: July 2, 2021 (#13).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →KARMA in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #1065
Reveal this appearance's category
KARMA appeared in BODY PARTS SURROUNDED BY TWO LETTERS (purple group).
How KARMA performs as a guess
KARMA is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 70.4% of games, misses completely in 29.6%, and leaves about 319 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,378 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe KARMA 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How KARMA 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches KARMA in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
KARMA can come back 71 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for KARMA; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing KARMA
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to KARMA.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing KARMA:
Research on KARMA
Game-tree analysis and word research for KARMA, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with KARMA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,229 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.96 guesses at best and is rank #5,586 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- KARMA sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 8 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (2.6 of 5).
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).