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

SLURS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of slur

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of slur

“He always slurs his 'R's. I wish he'd stop mumbling.”

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it SLURZ.

Rhymes with SPURS STIRS BLURS PURRS

Related meanings

Synonyms spot dim blur SMEAR blot

In a sentence

Tom slurs his words whenever he gets drunk.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Tom admitted to shouting ethnic slurs.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use SLURS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.5% 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 SLURS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SLURS 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 79.5% of games, misses completely in 20.5%, and leaves about 228 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,551 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 SLURS 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.

4.28 Entropy (bits)
228 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SLURS 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#9,551 Rank among openers
Opening with SLURS left 3 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 3.75 average. It ranks #9,551 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
804
4 guesses
1,226
5 guesses
256
6 guesses
24

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LRSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
33%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

SLURS can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

488 answers
412 answers
232 answers
145 answers
109 answers
108 answers
87 answers
75 answers
65 answers
53 answers
51 answers
47 answers
46 answers
41 answers
40 answers
36 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1L1U1R1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing SLURS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SLURS:

20% chance
Suggested:
CANOE
17% chance
Suggested:
NAICE
10% chance
Suggested:
LADLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.5% →
CANOE 6.01 bits
17.3% →
NAICE 5.34 bits
9.7% →
LADLE 5.18 bits
6.1% →
ATONE 5.24 bits
4.6% →
ATONE 4.96 bits
4.5% →
CONTE 4.71 bits
3.6% →
THOSE 5.10 bits
3.1% →
COATE 4.84 bits
2.7% →
ARIEL 4.20 bits
2.2% →
THALE 4.57 bits

Research on SLURS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SLURS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,876 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.93 guesses at best and is rank #4,961 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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
SLURS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (4.0 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).