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

TELOS

TELOS 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.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈtiː.lɒs//ˈtɛ.lɒs/

Noun

The aim, purpose, or end goal.

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 TELOS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TELOS 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 90.4% of games, misses completely in 9.6%, and leaves about 95 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #754 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 TELOS 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.

5.31 Entropy (bits)
95 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 95% of evaluated openers
0.63 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TELOS 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
99.87% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#754 Rank among openers
Opening with TELOS left 3 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 3.59 average. It ranks #754 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
78
3 guesses
979
4 guesses
1,135
5 guesses
142
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:
ELOST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
90%
Green tile
26%
All gray
10%

Feedback distribution

TELOS can come back 110 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

229 answers
220 answers
138 answers
125 answers
111 answers
105 answers
93 answers
92 answers
91 answers
90 answers
66 answers
63 answers
53 answers
51 answers
45 answers
44 answers
41 answers
41 answers
37 answers
35 answers
33 answers
33 answers
30 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1E1L1O1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing TELOS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TELOS:

10% chance
Suggested:
CAIRN
9% chance
Suggested:
AIDER
6% chance
Suggested:
CRONY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

9.6%
CAIRN 5.87 bits
9.3%
AIDER 5.23 bits
5.8%
CRONY 4.96 bits
5.3%
RAINY 4.86 bits
4.7%
SHARP 5.10 bits
4.4%
ARENE 4.53 bits
3.9%
FAITH 4.72 bits
3.9%
RAINY 4.56 bits
3.8%
SPAER 4.82 bits
3.8%
MORNE 4.31 bits

Research on TELOS

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

Optimal play

Opening with TELOS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,106 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 #125 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 3.64, 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 TEHLOHS.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TELOS 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).