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

PURSY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Out of breath; short of breath, especially due to fatness.

Adjective

Fat and short.

Alternative forms: pursive

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 PURSY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PURSY 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 76.9% of games, misses completely in 23.1%, and leaves about 223 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,898 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 PURSY 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.

4.57 Entropy (bits)
223 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 56% of evaluated openers
1.38 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PURSY 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#4,898 Rank among openers
Opening with PURSY left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #4,898 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
70
3 guesses
919
4 guesses
1,107
5 guesses
233
6 guesses
23
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:
RSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
35%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

PURSY can come back 107 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

548 answers
363 answers
169 answers
147 answers
99 answers
71 answers
67 answers
62 answers
62 answers
52 answers
51 answers
43 answers
42 answers
41 answers
35 answers
33 answers
30 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
20 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3U1R1S1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing PURSY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PURSY:

23% chance
Suggested:
ALONE
15% chance
Suggested:
IRATE
7% chance
Suggested:
STILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.1%
ALONE 6.14 bits
15.3%
IRATE 5.25 bits
7.1%
STILE 5.50 bits
6.2%
ANOLE 4.70 bits
4.2%
CLONE 4.96 bits
3.0%
AHOLE 4.98 bits
2.8%
BLITE 4.68 bits
2.6%
STANE 4.67 bits
2.6%
CANOE 4.84 bits
2.2%
CRUET 4.70 bits

Research on PURSY

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

Optimal play

Opening with PURSY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,371 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,333 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it PURSEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

Synonyms BLOWN breathless

Opposites breathing

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).