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

KAURI

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkaʊɹi/

Noun

A conifer of the genus Agathis, found in Australasia and Melanesia, especially Agathis australis.

Noun

A resinous product of the kauri tree, found in the form of yellow or brown lumps in the ground where the trees have grown. It is used for making varnish, and as a substitute for amber.

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Māori kauri from Proto-Polynesian *kauquli, from *kau (“tree”) + *quli (“black”), originally referring to Samoan ebony ("Diospyros samoensis").

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use KAURI in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.5% 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 KAURI performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KAURI 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 87.2% of games, misses completely in 12.8%, and leaves about 154 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,144 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 KAURI 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.

4.58 Entropy (bits)
154 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KAURI 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#10,144 Rank among openers
Opening with KAURI left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #10,144 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
781
4 guesses
1,225
5 guesses
274
6 guesses
24

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AIRU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
26%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

KAURI can come back 70 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

305 answers
284 answers
241 answers
197 answers
147 answers
119 answers
115 answers
114 answers
73 answers
70 answers
69 answers
62 answers
52 answers
46 answers
44 answers
42 answers
31 answers
30 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5A1U1R1I1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing KAURI

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KAURI:

13% chance
Suggested:
STOLE
12% chance
Suggested:
SIENT
10% chance
Suggested:
SLATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.8% →
STOLE 5.71 bits
11.9% →
SIENT 5.27 bits
10.1% →
SLATE 5.69 bits
8.3% →
TOWER 4.85 bits
6.2% →
SONLY 4.47 bits
5.0% →
RIPEN 4.25 bits
4.8% →
SONLY 4.42 bits
4.8% →
BEAST 4.50 bits
3.1% →
PORTE 3.94 bits
2.9% →
SHOTE 4.44 bits

Research on KAURI

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

Optimal play

Opening with KAURI, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,569 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,662 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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
KAURI sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).