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

SCUTE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /skjuːt/

Noun

A horny, chitinous, or bony external plate or scale, as on the shell of a turtle, the skin of crocodiles, or the feet and legs of birds.

Noun

A proneural gene, often associated with achaete, that is required for the formation of many larval and adult sense organs

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 SCUTE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SCUTE 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 84.8% of games, misses completely in 15.2%, and leaves about 133 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,806 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe SCUTE 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.

5.14 Entropy (bits)
133 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 90% of evaluated openers
0.81 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SCUTE 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
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#2,806 Rank among openers
Opening with SCUTE left 2 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 #2,806 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
81
3 guesses
921
4 guesses
1,144
5 guesses
190
6 guesses
16
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:
ESTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
39%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

SCUTE can come back 114 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

361 answers
282 answers
152 answers
128 answers
114 answers
99 answers
88 answers
83 answers
61 answers
55 answers
50 answers
45 answers
42 answers
41 answers
38 answers
33 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1C3U1T1E1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SCUTE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SCUTE:

15% chance
Suggested:
LAIRY
12% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
6% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.2%
LAIRY 5.76 bits
11.9%
ARIEL 5.11 bits
6.4%
ARIEL 4.37 bits
5.4%
CAIRN 5.41 bits
4.8%
TALON 5.19 bits
4.2%
ALTER 4.65 bits
3.7%
LAIRY 4.62 bits
3.5%
MURAL 4.55 bits
2.6%
CLEAR 4.64 bits
2.3%
BRASS 4.80 bits

Research on SCUTE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SCUTE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,942 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,133 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 3.65, 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 SKOOT. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SCUTE is a kind of cover.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SCUTE 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).