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

RUCHE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɹuːʃ/

Noun

A strip of fabric which has been fluted or pleated.

Noun

A small ruff of fluted or pleated fabric worn at neck or wrist.

Verb

To flute or pleat (fabric).

“ruched curtains”

Verb

To bunch up (fabric); to ruck up.

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

Use RUCHE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.6% 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 RUCHE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts RUCHE 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 83.0% of games, misses completely in 17.0%, and leaves about 153 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,468 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 RUCHE 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.

4.85 Entropy (bits)
153 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RUCHE 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
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#4,468 Rank among openers
Opening with RUCHE 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 3.66 average. It ranks #4,468 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
920
4 guesses
1,154
5 guesses
196
6 guesses
23

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ERU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
31%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

RUCHE can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

405 answers
231 answers
200 answers
175 answers
164 answers
88 answers
86 answers
78 answers
70 answers
68 answers
46 answers
44 answers
39 answers
39 answers
38 answers
35 answers
32 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1U1C3H4E1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing RUCHE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RUCHE:

17% chance
Suggested:
SALON
10% chance
Suggested:
LEANT
8% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.0% →
SALON 6.05 bits
9.7% →
LEANT 5.28 bits
8.4% →
TRAIN 5.23 bits
7.3% →
STAIR 4.22 bits
6.9% →
SLANT 5.20 bits
3.7% →
CLANK 4.92 bits
3.6% →
SLANT 5.25 bits
3.3% →
PEART 3.83 bits
2.9% →
SLATY 4.99 bits
2.9% →
SADLY 4.14 bits

Research on RUCHE

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

Optimal play

Opening with RUCHE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,808 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,983 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
RUCHE 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).