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

SORTA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 96.0% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SORTA Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈsɔːtə//ˈsɔɹtə/[-ɾə]

Adverb

Contraction of sort of.

“The portraits on the wall aren’t that good, but they’re just sorta cool to have around.”

Contraction

Sort of.

“There’s gotta be some sorta explanation.”

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 SORTA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SORTA 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 88.5% of games, misses completely in 11.5%, and leaves about 96 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #228 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.57 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.

S___A S in the 1st position and A in the 5th position S__T_ S in the 1st position and T in the 4th position _O__A O in the 2nd position and A in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe SORTA 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.

5.49 Entropy (bits)
96 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 98% of evaluated openers
0.46 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SORTA 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.

3.57 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#228 Rank among openers
Opening with SORTA left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.57 average. It ranks #228 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
80
3 guesses
1,037
4 guesses
1,069
5 guesses
150
6 guesses
17
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:
AORST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
38%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

SORTA can come back 122 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

273 answers
211 answers
149 answers
134 answers
92 answers
90 answers
83 answers
82 answers
79 answers
68 answers
54 answers
49 answers
49 answers
40 answers
38 answers
38 answers
35 answers
35 answers
34 answers
32 answers
30 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1O1R1T1A1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 5 points

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

Try next

CLINE CIDER CLADE CLONE TITLE DRICE

Strategy after playing SORTA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SORTA:

11% chance
Suggested:
CLINE
9% chance
Suggested:
CLINE
6% chance
Suggested:
CIDER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.5% →
CLINE 6.00 bits
8.9% →
CLINE 5.50 bits
6.3% →
CIDER 4.98 bits
5.6% →
CLADE 4.52 bits
3.9% →
CLONE 4.22 bits
3.8% →
TITLE 5.03 bits
3.5% →
CLINE 5.10 bits
3.5% →
CLINE 4.53 bits
3.3% →
CLINE 5.22 bits
2.9% →
DRICE 4.22 bits

Research on SORTA

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

Optimal play

Opening with SORTA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #377 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.73 guesses at best and is rank #166 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.57, at or below the proven-optimal 3.61, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it SAWRTUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SORTA sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).