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

TALUS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈteɪləs/

Noun

The bone of the ankle.

Noun

A sloping heap of fragments of rock lying at the foot of a precipice.

Alternative forms: tallus

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

Use TALUS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.7% 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 TALUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TALUS 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 84.3% of games, misses completely in 15.7%, and leaves about 127 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #619 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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 TALUS 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.

5.08 Entropy (bits)
127 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TALUS 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#619 Rank among openers
Opening with TALUS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.59 average. It ranks #619 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
1,038
4 guesses
1,090
5 guesses
150
6 guesses
17

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ALSTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
26%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

TALUS can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

374 answers
179 answers
146 answers
142 answers
123 answers
119 answers
114 answers
107 answers
72 answers
69 answers
59 answers
46 answers
44 answers
43 answers
42 answers
40 answers
39 answers
35 answers
34 answers
34 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1A1L1U1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing TALUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TALUS:

16% chance
Suggested:
DRONE
8% chance
Suggested:
DRONE
6% chance
Suggested:
NOIRE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.7% →
DRONE 6.14 bits
7.5% →
DRONE 5.63 bits
6.1% →
NOIRE 5.08 bits
6.0% →
PRONE 5.41 bits
5.2% →
MORNE 4.83 bits
5.0% →
COREY 4.82 bits
4.8% →
MORNE 4.73 bits
4.5% →
CRANE 4.64 bits
3.0% →
SHIER 4.85 bits
2.9% →
PHARE 4.73 bits

Research on TALUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with TALUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,664 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.76 guesses at best and is rank #402 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TALUS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).