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

LUNGS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /lʌŋz/

Noun

plural of lung

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 LUNGS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LUNGS 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 74.9% of games, misses completely in 25.1%, and leaves about 241 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,036 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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 LUNGS 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.

4.37 Entropy (bits)
241 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 43% of evaluated openers
1.58 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LUNGS 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,036 Rank among openers
Opening with LUNGS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.65 average. It ranks #4,036 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
924
4 guesses
1,162
5 guesses
198
6 guesses
12
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:
LNSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
20%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

LUNGS can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

596 answers
276 answers
269 answers
153 answers
89 answers
67 answers
67 answers
65 answers
64 answers
63 answers
46 answers
44 answers
44 answers
43 answers
42 answers
41 answers
29 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1U1N1G2S1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing LUNGS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LUNGS:

25% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
12% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
11% chance
Suggested:
ROATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.1%
ORATE 6.16 bits
11.6%
TIARE 5.80 bits
11.3%
ROATE 5.28 bits
6.4%
ROATE 5.41 bits
3.7%
THALE 4.82 bits
2.8%
COATE 4.46 bits
2.8%
MOIRE 4.39 bits
2.7%
ORATE 4.98 bits
2.7%
RAINE 4.51 bits
2.7%
CRATE 5.28 bits

Research on LUNGS

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

Optimal play

Opening with LUNGS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,108 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.82 guesses at best and is rank #2,002 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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

One syllable Say it LUHNGZ.

Rhymes with RUNGS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, LUNGS is a kind of organ.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
LUNGS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 9 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 6, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 92 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (3.0 of 5).

In a sentence

There's water in his lungs.
© tatoeba.org contributor abiniz (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Sport is good for the lungs.
© tatoeba.org contributor Nufel (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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).