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

QUERN

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with QUERN Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /kwɝn//kwɜːn/

Noun

A mill for grinding corn, especially a handmill made of two circular stones.

Verb

To grind; to use a quern.

Alternative forms: curn, kern, quirn

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 QUERN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts QUERN 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 81.1% of games, misses completely in 18.9%, and leaves about 198 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,760 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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.

Q___N Q in the 1st position and N in the 5th position Q__R_ Q in the 1st position and R in the 4th position _U__N U in the 2nd position and N in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe QUERN 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.

4.33 Entropy (bits)
198 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 40% of evaluated openers
1.62 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How QUERN 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#11,760 Rank among openers
Opening with QUERN left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,760 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
735
4 guesses
1,260
5 guesses
288
6 guesses
31
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
2 vowels
Common:
ENRU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
25%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

QUERN can come back 63 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

448 answers
319 answers
238 answers
205 answers
148 answers
88 answers
84 answers
77 answers
75 answers
63 answers
52 answers
42 answers
41 answers
39 answers
38 answers
38 answers
34 answers
33 answers
29 answers
29 answers
24 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Q10U1E1R1N1
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Try next

SALTY LEASE STAIR COAST COALY ANISE

Strategy after playing QUERN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing QUERN:

19% chance
Suggested:
SALTY
13% chance
Suggested:
LEASE
10% chance
Suggested:
STAIR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.9% →
SALTY 5.82 bits
13.4% →
LEASE 5.45 bits
10.0% →
STAIR 4.26 bits
8.6% →
COAST 5.35 bits
6.2% →
COALY 4.95 bits
3.7% →
ANISE 4.55 bits
3.5% →
SHALT 5.22 bits
3.2% →
COAST 4.91 bits
3.2% →
SADLY 4.06 bits
2.7% →
COAST 4.66 bits

Research on QUERN

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

Optimal play

Opening with QUERN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #11,972 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 QUERN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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 KWURN. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, QUERN is a kind of mill.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
QUERN 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).