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

STARS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /stɑɹz//stɑːz/

Noun

plural of star

Noun

Outer space.

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of star

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 STARS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts STARS 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 81.3% of games, misses completely in 18.7%, and leaves about 178 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,810 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 STARS 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.

4.61 Entropy (bits)
178 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 59% of evaluated openers
1.34 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How STARS 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#7,810 Rank among openers
Opening with STARS left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #7,810 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
865
4 guesses
1,202
5 guesses
231
6 guesses
18
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

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ARST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
31%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

STARS can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

444 answers
273 answers
225 answers
179 answers
119 answers
112 answers
103 answers
86 answers
72 answers
47 answers
47 answers
36 answers
35 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1T1A1R1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 5 points

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

Strategy after playing STARS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing STARS:

19% chance
Suggested:
CLONE
11% chance
Suggested:
GOIER
9% chance
Suggested:
CLONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.7%
CLONE 5.92 bits
11.5%
GOIER 4.96 bits
9.5%
CLONE 5.30 bits
7.5%
TITLE 5.17 bits
5.0%
RACER 4.51 bits
4.7%
CLINE 5.21 bits
4.3%
CLINE 4.39 bits
3.6%
TRIBE 4.61 bits
3.0%
CLINE 4.78 bits
2.0%
CLINE 3.94 bits

Research on STARS

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

Optimal play

Opening with STARS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,839 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,234 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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 STAHRZ.

Rhymes with SCARS CZARS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, STARS is a kind of whole or expert.

Synonyms lead leading champion principal genius ace

Opposites MINOR

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
STARS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 72 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.4 of 5).

In a sentence

Do you see the stars?
© tatoeba.org contributor CarpeLanam (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The stars know all things.
© tatoeba.org contributor Igider (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).