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

TURFS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /tɜː(ɹ)fs//tɜː(ɹ)vz/

Noun

plural of turf

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of turf

Alternative forms: turves

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 TURFS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TURFS 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 77.5% of games, misses completely in 22.5%, and leaves about 214 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,753 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 TURFS 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.

4.51 Entropy (bits)
214 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 52% of evaluated openers
1.44 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TURFS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#2,753 Rank among openers
Opening with TURFS 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,753 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
948
4 guesses
1,155
5 guesses
176
6 guesses
14
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:
RSTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
22%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

TURFS can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

535 answers
323 answers
211 answers
148 answers
111 answers
70 answers
66 answers
65 answers
64 answers
64 answers
57 answers
45 answers
39 answers
39 answers
37 answers
37 answers
37 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1U1R1F4S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing TURFS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TURFS:

23% chance
Suggested:
ALONE
14% chance
Suggested:
CANOE
9% chance
Suggested:
PLANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.5%
ALONE 6.20 bits
13.6%
CANOE 5.35 bits
8.9%
PLANE 5.54 bits
6.2%
HAOLE 5.18 bits
4.7%
LIANE 4.87 bits
2.9%
MAILE 4.24 bits
2.8%
CANOE 4.70 bits
2.7%
SPANE 4.81 bits
2.7%
CLONE 4.87 bits
2.7%
DAINE 4.80 bits

Research on TURFS

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

Optimal play

Opening with TURFS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,774 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,516 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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 TURFS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TURFS is a kind of land or district.

Synonyms sod

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TURFS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.1 of 5).

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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).