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

PERLE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

We do not have a sourced definition for this word yet.

Check PERLE on Wiktionary or report a missing entry.

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 PERLE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PERLE 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 80.3% of games, misses completely in 19.7%, and leaves about 164 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,304 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe PERLE 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.

4.90 Entropy (bits)
164 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 78% of evaluated openers
1.05 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PERLE 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#3,304 Rank among openers
Opening with PERLE left 2 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 3.64 average. It ranks #3,304 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
944
4 guesses
1,129
5 guesses
200
6 guesses
15
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.45 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ELR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
40%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

PERLE can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

465 answers
235 answers
187 answers
137 answers
122 answers
97 answers
78 answers
69 answers
68 answers
54 answers
52 answers
50 answers
44 answers
40 answers
34 answers
34 answers
28 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PERLE:

20% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
10% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
8% chance
Suggested:
COAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.7%
SAINT 6.15 bits
10.0%
TRAIN 5.32 bits
7.9%
COAST 5.19 bits
5.8%
SAINT 5.24 bits
5.2%
SAINT 4.30 bits
4.1%
ONSET 4.99 bits
3.3%
IDYLL 3.95 bits
2.9%
COAST 4.79 bits
2.9%
COAST 4.41 bits
2.3%
SAINT 4.65 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3E1R1L1E1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

The science of PERLE

What game-tree analysis and word research measure about PERLE — each figure with what it means.

Optimal play

Opening with PERLE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses — rank #2,972 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best — rank #2,206 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 3.67 only 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) — not the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

One syllable — say it PURL.

Rhymes with PEARL SWIRL MERLE WHIRL TWIRL

How people know it

Frequency
PERLE sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English — 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).