LURCH
LURCH is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /lɜːt͡ʃ//lɜɹt͡ʃ/
- Noun
-
A sudden or unsteady movement.
“the lurch of a ship, or of a drunkard”
- Verb
-
To make such a sudden, unsteady movement.
- Noun
-
A predicament or difficult situation.
“to leave someone in the lurch”
- Verb
-
To defeat in the game of cribbage with a lurch (double score as explained under noun entry).
Alternative forms: lorch
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English *lurche (implied in derivative lurching), from Old French lourche (“deceived, embarrassed; also the name of a game”), from Proto-West Germanic *lort (“left; left-handed; crooked; bent; warped; underhanded; deceitful; limping”). Cognate to English lirt.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it LURCH.
Related meanings
Synonyms SHIFT PITCH pitching reel stumble keel
In a sentence
He left me in the lurch.
Mike left his brother in the lurch.
Use LURCH in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 91.4% 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
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →LURCH in Connections
2 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #532
Reveal this appearance's category
LURCH appeared in CAREEN (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #127
Reveal this appearance's category
LURCH appeared in “THE ADDAMS FAMILY” CHARACTERS (blue group).
How LURCH performs as a guess
LURCH 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 80.5% of games, misses completely in 19.5%, and leaves about 206 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,307 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 LURCH 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 LURCH 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 LURCH in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
LURCH can come back 98 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 LURCH; 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 LURCH
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to LURCH.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing LURCH:
Research on LURCH
Game-tree analysis and word research for LURCH, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with LURCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,689 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 #1,929 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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
- LURCH 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.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.3 of 5).
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).