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

ROLFS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of rolf

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

Etymology

Borrowed from German Rolfs.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it ROHLFS.

Use ROLFS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% 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 ROLFS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ROLFS 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 83.8% of games, misses completely in 16.2%, and leaves about 170 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,222 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 ROLFS 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.

4.62 Entropy (bits)
170 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ROLFS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#4,222 Rank among openers
Opening with ROLFS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,222 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
906
4 guesses
1,203
5 guesses
185
6 guesses
8

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
22%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

ROLFS can come back 87 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

387 answers
296 answers
225 answers
222 answers
105 answers
104 answers
99 answers
97 answers
75 answers
56 answers
51 answers
51 answers
47 answers
40 answers
38 answers
38 answers
33 answers
32 answers
32 answers
27 answers
23 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1O1L1F4S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing ROLFS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ROLFS:

16% chance
Suggested:
NAICE
12% chance
Suggested:
CADET
9% chance
Suggested:
STANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.2% →
NAICE 5.98 bits
12.4% →
CADET 5.51 bits
9.4% →
STANE 5.59 bits
9.3% →
NAICE 5.49 bits
4.4% →
DAINE 5.22 bits
4.4% →
ATONE 4.45 bits
4.2% →
SPATE 5.05 bits
4.1% →
THANE 4.35 bits
3.1% →
THALE 4.80 bits
2.3% →
ARIEL 4.28 bits

Research on ROLFS

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

Optimal play

Opening with ROLFS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #5,187 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,657 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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
ROLFS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).