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

THURL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /θɝl//θɜːl/

Noun

Alternative form of thirl.

Noun

Either of the rear hip joints where the hip connects to the upper leg in certain animals, particularly cattle; often used as a reference point for measurement.

Verb

Alternative form of thirl.

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 THURL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts THURL 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 84.7% of games, misses completely in 15.3%, and leaves about 159 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,802 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 THURL 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.

4.86 Entropy (bits)
159 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 76% of evaluated openers
1.08 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How THURL 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,802 Rank among openers
Opening with THURL left 3 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 3.62 average. It ranks #1,802 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
1,017
4 guesses
1,075
5 guesses
185
6 guesses
19
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
1 vowels
Common:
LRTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
28%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

THURL can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

364 answers
336 answers
242 answers
154 answers
86 answers
73 answers
72 answers
59 answers
56 answers
53 answers
52 answers
49 answers
48 answers
45 answers
45 answers
44 answers
34 answers
33 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
24 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1H4U1R1L1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing THURL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing THURL:

15% chance
Suggested:
SAINE
14% chance
Suggested:
DAINE
10% chance
Suggested:
SAINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.3%
SAINE 6.20 bits
14.2%
DAINE 5.44 bits
10.2%
SAINE 5.33 bits
6.5%
SAINE 5.56 bits
3.6%
SNIDE 4.83 bits
3.1%
AINEE 4.50 bits
3.0%
ARISE 4.74 bits
2.5%
DANSE 4.65 bits
2.4%
SLATE 4.77 bits
2.2%
SNAKE 4.96 bits

Research on THURL

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

Optimal play

Opening with THURL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,721 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,142 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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 THURL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
THURL 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).