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

PURLS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PURLS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /pɜːlz/[pʰəːɫz]/pɝlz/

Noun

plural of purl

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of purl

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 PURLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PURLS 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 82.4% of games, misses completely in 17.6%, and leaves about 179 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,817 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

P___S P in the 1st position and S in the 5th position P__L_ P in the 1st position and L in the 4th position _U__S U in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in PURLS.

First-turn measures

All four describe PURLS 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.

4.72 Entropy (bits)
179 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 66% of evaluated openers
1.23 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PURLS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#2,817 Rank among openers
Opening with PURLS 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,817 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
981
4 guesses
1,096
5 guesses
196
6 guesses
21
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:
LRSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
26%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

PURLS can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

417 answers
343 answers
226 answers
187 answers
80 answers
77 answers
72 answers
65 answers
64 answers
57 answers
53 answers
48 answers
43 answers
41 answers
36 answers
34 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
25 answers
25 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3U1R1L1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

CANOE CADET STANE STOAE COATE DAINE

Strategy after playing PURLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PURLS:

18% chance
Suggested:
CANOE
14% chance
Suggested:
CADET
10% chance
Suggested:
CANOE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.6% →
CANOE 6.02 bits
14.4% →
CADET 5.40 bits
9.5% →
CANOE 5.38 bits
7.9% →
STANE 5.59 bits
3.4% →
STOAE 4.91 bits
3.2% →
COATE 4.83 bits
3.0% →
DAINE 4.80 bits
2.7% →
CONTE 4.33 bits
2.7% →
CONTE 4.86 bits
2.4% →
BLAER 4.49 bits

Research on PURLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PURLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #3,012 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #833 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, PURLS is a kind of thread or stitch.

Synonyms eddy SWIRL

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PURLS 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).