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

PERVS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of perv

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of perv

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Related meanings

Synonyms degenerate pervert deviate deviant

Use PERVS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.9% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No 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.

How PERVS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PERVS 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 80.2% of games, misses completely in 19.8%, and leaves about 193 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,424 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 PERVS 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.

4.53 Entropy (bits)
193 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PERVS 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,424 Rank among openers
Opening with PERVS 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 3.71 average. It ranks #7,424 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
829
4 guesses
1,227
5 guesses
223
6 guesses
18

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ERS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
24%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

PERVS can come back 89 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

473 answers
264 answers
215 answers
206 answers
182 answers
106 answers
95 answers
64 answers
52 answers
49 answers
48 answers
43 answers
40 answers
39 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3E1R1V4S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing PERVS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PERVS:

20% chance
Suggested:
TALON
11% chance
Suggested:
ANILE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.8% →
TALON 5.78 bits
11.1% →
ANILE 5.51 bits
9.0% →
TRAIN 5.30 bits
8.6% →
SLANT 5.29 bits
7.6% →
IRATE 4.37 bits
4.4% →
SLANT 4.90 bits
4.0% →
THALE 4.43 bits
2.7% →
COALY 4.61 bits
2.2% →
RATEL 3.95 bits
2.1% →
COAST 4.50 bits

Research on PERVS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PERVS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #7,075 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.84 guesses at best and is rank #2,632 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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
PERVS 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).