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

PIRLS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of pirl

Noun

plural of pirl

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 PIRLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PIRLS 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 85.2% of games, misses completely in 14.8%, and leaves about 146 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #512 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.58 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 PIRLS 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.

4.93 Entropy (bits)
146 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 79% of evaluated openers
1.02 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PIRLS 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.

3.58 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#512 Rank among openers
Opening with PIRLS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.58 average. It ranks #512 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
1,050
4 guesses
1,072
5 guesses
156
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:
ILRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
28%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

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

351 answers
296 answers
193 answers
181 answers
129 answers
80 answers
79 answers
69 answers
67 answers
66 answers
54 answers
52 answers
50 answers
49 answers
39 answers
31 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3I1R1L1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing PIRLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PIRLS:

15% chance
Suggested:
COATE
12% chance
Suggested:
COATE
8% chance
Suggested:
CANOE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.8%
COATE 5.95 bits
12.5%
COATE 5.44 bits
8.1%
CANOE 5.38 bits
7.6%
STANE 5.61 bits
5.4%
ATONE 5.27 bits
3.4%
DAINE 4.79 bits
3.3%
COATE 4.90 bits
2.9%
STOAE 4.78 bits
2.8%
LADLE 4.29 bits
2.8%
TONEY 4.36 bits

Research on PIRLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PIRLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,210 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.75 guesses at best and is rank #300 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.58, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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 PURLZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PIRLS 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).