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

PULLS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /pʊlz/

Noun

plural of pull

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of pull

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it PUULZ.

Rhymes with BULLS WOOLS

Related meanings

Synonyms take draw remove pulling tear commit

Opposites push

In a sentence

I hope Tom pulls through this.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Who pulls the strings here?
© tatoeba.org contributor DJ_Saidez (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use PULLS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 84.3% 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 PULLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PULLS 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 64.8% of games, misses completely in 35.2%, and leaves about 374 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,336 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 PULLS 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.

3.87 Entropy (bits)
374 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PULLS 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#9,336 Rank among openers
Opening with PULLS 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 3.75 average. It ranks #9,336 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
824
4 guesses
1,189
5 guesses
279
6 guesses
18

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
65%
Green tile
24%
All gray
35%

Feedback distribution

PULLS can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

838 answers
290 answers
233 answers
110 answers
95 answers
70 answers
67 answers
65 answers
56 answers
52 answers
46 answers
44 answers
36 answers
32 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3U1L1L1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing PULLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PULLS:

35% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
12% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
10% chance
Suggested:
ROATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

35.2% →
ROATE 6.10 bits
12.2% →
TIARE 5.81 bits
9.8% →
ROATE 5.33 bits
4.6% →
TRONE 5.43 bits
4.0% →
CATER 4.47 bits
2.9% →
RIONE 5.08 bits
2.8% →
ROATE 5.33 bits
2.7% →
TIARE 4.64 bits
2.3% →
CARET 4.39 bits
2.2% →
DAINE 4.72 bits

Research on PULLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PULLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,858 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with PULLS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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
PULLS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 10 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with touch (4.4 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).