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

SURDS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of surd

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

Related meanings

Synonyms hard whispered

Use SURDS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 87.7% 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 SURDS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SURDS 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 72.0% of games, misses completely in 28.0%, and leaves about 293 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,437 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 SURDS 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.

4.01 Entropy (bits)
293 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SURDS 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
99.79% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,437 Rank among openers
Opening with SURDS left 5 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 3.75 average. It ranks #9,437 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
816
4 guesses
1,211
5 guesses
268
6 guesses
17

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
RSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
32%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

SURDS can come back 68 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

667 answers
376 answers
196 answers
125 answers
105 answers
97 answers
91 answers
90 answers
85 answers
59 answers
51 answers
38 answers
37 answers
35 answers
25 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1U1R1D2S1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing SURDS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SURDS:

28% chance
Suggested:
ALONE
16% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
8% chance
Suggested:
PLATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.0% →
ALONE 6.09 bits
15.8% →
ARIEL 5.11 bits
8.2% →
PLATE 5.49 bits
5.2% →
ANILE 5.45 bits
4.4% →
PLATE 5.21 bits
4.1% →
CLONE 4.95 bits
3.8% →
DIANE 4.93 bits
3.8% →
COATE 4.88 bits
3.6% →
GLACE 4.07 bits
2.5% →
THANE 4.61 bits

Research on SURDS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SURDS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,306 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with SURDS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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
SURDS 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).