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

ORTHO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɔː.θəʊ//ˈoɹ.θoʊ/

Noun

An isomer of a benzene derivative having two substituents adjacent on the ring.

Noun

A certain type of flat eyepiece.

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 ORTHO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ORTHO 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 74.7% of games, misses completely in 25.3%, and leaves about 247 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,623 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 ORTHO 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.

4.19 Entropy (bits)
247 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 32% of evaluated openers
1.75 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ORTHO 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#9,623 Rank among openers
Opening with ORTHO solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,623 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
791
4 guesses
1,249
5 guesses
241
6 guesses
29
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ORT

Feedback chances

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

Feedback distribution

ORTHO can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

600 answers
265 answers
232 answers
191 answers
129 answers
128 answers
94 answers
68 answers
55 answers
54 answers
49 answers
47 answers
44 answers
40 answers
33 answers
32 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1R1T1H4O1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing ORTHO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ORTHO:

25% chance
Suggested:
ANILE
11% chance
Suggested:
LAREE
10% chance
Suggested:
SLANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.3%
ANILE 6.20 bits
11.2%
LAREE 5.07 bits
9.8%
SLANE 5.85 bits
8.0%
SLANE 5.22 bits
5.4%
CADIE 4.91 bits
5.4%
SLICE 5.44 bits
4.0%
CARER 4.35 bits
2.9%
SLANT 4.28 bits
2.3%
NAICE 4.60 bits
2.3%
BEAST 4.65 bits

Research on ORTHO

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

Optimal play

Opening with ORTHO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,615 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 #4,766 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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 AWRTHOH.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ORTHO 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.

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).