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

TUNER

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈtuː.nɚ//ˈtjuː.nə//ˈtʃuː.nə/

Noun

A person who tunes a piano or organ.

Noun

A device, electronic or mechanical, that helps a person tune a musical instrument by showing the deviation of the played pitch from the desired pitch.

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

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it TOONUR.

Rhymes with LUNAR

Related meanings

Synonyms RADIO wireless

In a sentence

Tom is a piano tuner.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I worked as a piano tuner for many years.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use TUNER in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.6% 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 TUNER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TUNER 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 87.7% of games, misses completely in 12.3%, and leaves about 104 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,090 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 TUNER 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.

5.36 Entropy (bits)
104 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TUNER 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#1,090 Rank among openers
Opening with TUNER left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #1,090 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
88
3 guesses
978
4 guesses
1,090
5 guesses
176
6 guesses
20

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENRTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
33%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

TUNER can come back 124 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

293 answers
211 answers
156 answers
132 answers
129 answers
93 answers
90 answers
88 answers
67 answers
65 answers
54 answers
54 answers
52 answers
49 answers
49 answers
30 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1U1N1E1R1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing TUNER

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TUNER:

12% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
9% chance
Suggested:
SLADE
7% chance
Suggested:
COALY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.3% →
SOILY 5.73 bits
8.9% →
SLADE 5.49 bits
6.5% →
COALY 5.19 bits
5.5% →
PEARE 4.60 bits
5.4% →
HOIST 5.28 bits
3.9% →
SHALT 5.05 bits
3.8% →
SOILY 3.55 bits
3.7% →
SLAIN 5.05 bits
2.8% →
ALONE 4.43 bits
2.7% →
SADLY 4.14 bits

Research on TUNER

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

Optimal play

Opening with TUNER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #514 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 TUNER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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
TUNER 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).