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

THUJA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈθu.jə//ˈθu.d͡ʒə/

Noun

A tree of the genus Thuja.

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 THUJA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts THUJA 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 73.7% of games, misses completely in 26.3%, and leaves about 305 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,257 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

First-turn measures

All four describe THUJA 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.

3.91 Entropy (bits)
305 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 19% of evaluated openers
2.04 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How THUJA 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.

3.82 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#12,257 Rank among openers
Opening with THUJA left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.82 average. It ranks #12,257 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
742
4 guesses
1,214
5 guesses
328
6 guesses
30
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:
ATU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
20%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

THUJA can come back 65 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

625 answers
479 answers
168 answers
153 answers
150 answers
70 answers
58 answers
56 answers
53 answers
49 answers
48 answers
47 answers
45 answers
41 answers
36 answers
30 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
15 answers
15 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1H4U1J8A1
Total: 15 points

Words With Friends

Total: 17 points

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

Strategy after playing THUJA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing THUJA:

26% chance
Suggested:
NOIRE
20% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
7% chance
Suggested:
SOREL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.3%
NOIRE 5.95 bits
20.2%
CARLE 5.40 bits
7.1%
SOREL 5.51 bits
6.4%
SLIER 5.01 bits
6.3%
SLIER 4.89 bits
2.9%
PRONE 4.62 bits
2.4%
SWIRE 5.07 bits
2.4%
CLONE 4.74 bits
2.2%
SLIER 4.40 bits
2.1%
GRICE 4.06 bits

Research on THUJA

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

Optimal play

Opening with THUJA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.85 guesses and ranks #12,630 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.99 guesses at best and is rank #6,027 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, at or below the proven-optimal 3.85, 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 THOOJUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
THUJA 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).