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

PERST

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

simple past and past participle of perse

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 PERST performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PERST 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 85.8% of games, misses completely in 14.2%, and leaves about 116 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #158 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.56 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 PERST 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.

5.37 Entropy (bits)
116 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 96% of evaluated openers
0.57 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PERST 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.

3.56 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#158 Rank among openers
Opening with PERST left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.56 average. It ranks #158 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
92
3 guesses
1,035
4 guesses
1,052
5 guesses
158
6 guesses
16
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:
ERST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
34%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

PERST can come back 132 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

338 answers
219 answers
169 answers
152 answers
110 answers
103 answers
78 answers
61 answers
51 answers
50 answers
47 answers
43 answers
43 answers
43 answers
41 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3E1R1S1T1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing PERST

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PERST:

14% chance
Suggested:
COALY
9% chance
Suggested:
ANILE
7% chance
Suggested:
DRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.2%
COALY 5.79 bits
9.2%
ANILE 5.55 bits
7.1%
DRAIN 5.36 bits
6.4%
LAIDE 4.37 bits
4.6%
SNAIL 5.08 bits
4.3%
TITAN 5.01 bits
3.3%
LIANE 4.39 bits
2.6%
ANILE 4.39 bits
2.1%
ANILE 4.43 bits
2.1%
ANILE 4.51 bits

Research on PERST

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

Optimal play

Opening with PERST, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.60 guesses and ranks #165 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.71 guesses at best and is rank #26 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.56, at or below the proven-optimal 3.60, 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 PURST. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.