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

PALUS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PALUS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A vertical pillar along the inner septal margin of a coral.

Noun

A small plain (compared to mare) on the surface of a planet or satellite.

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 PALUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PALUS 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 80.4% of games, misses completely in 19.6%, and leaves about 170 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,835 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

P___S P in the 1st position and S in the 5th position P__U_ P in the 1st position and U in the 4th position _A__S A in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in PALUS.

First-turn measures

All four describe PALUS 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.

4.76 Entropy (bits)
170 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 69% of evaluated openers
1.19 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PALUS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,835 Rank among openers
Opening with PALUS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,835 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
973
4 guesses
1,109
5 guesses
201
6 guesses
13
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
2 vowels
Common:
ALSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
26%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

PALUS can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

466 answers
222 answers
170 answers
152 answers
149 answers
140 answers
116 answers
90 answers
56 answers
47 answers
47 answers
42 answers
41 answers
38 answers
37 answers
35 answers
30 answers
28 answers
26 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3A1L1U1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

TONER TRONE NOIRE RONTE TIARE STIRE

Strategy after playing PALUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PALUS:

20% chance
Suggested:
TONER
9% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
7% chance
Suggested:
TONER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.6% →
TONER 6.11 bits
9.4% →
TRONE 5.58 bits
7.2% →
TONER 5.58 bits
6.4% →
NOIRE 4.99 bits
6.3% →
RONTE 4.92 bits
5.9% →
RONTE 5.30 bits
4.9% →
TIARE 4.65 bits
3.8% →
STIRE 4.81 bits
2.4% →
SHUNT 4.27 bits
2.0% →
TRUCE 4.41 bits

Research on PALUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PALUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,938 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #912 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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 PALUHS. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PALUS 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).