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

ULNAR

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Of or pertaining to the ulna, or the elbow

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

Use ULNAR in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.3% 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 ULNAR performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ULNAR 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 88.7% of games, misses completely in 11.3%, and leaves about 111 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,918 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 ULNAR 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.

5.12 Entropy (bits)
111 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ULNAR 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,918 Rank among openers
Opening with ULNAR left 2 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 3.64 average. It ranks #2,918 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
955
4 guesses
1,137
5 guesses
181
6 guesses
19

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ALNRU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
29%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

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

270 answers
211 answers
197 answers
138 answers
134 answers
123 answers
103 answers
90 answers
75 answers
67 answers
62 answers
53 answers
52 answers
52 answers
43 answers
43 answers
41 answers
33 answers
31 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

U1L1N1A1R1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing ULNAR

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ULNAR:

11% chance
Suggested:
SHOTE
9% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
8% chance
Suggested:
CASTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.3% →
SHOTE 6.05 bits
8.9% →
TOISE 5.49 bits
8.3% →
CASTE 5.26 bits
5.8% →
HEART 4.66 bits
5.6% →
HELLO 4.97 bits
5.2% →
SMOTE 4.85 bits
4.3% →
TOISE 5.24 bits
3.8% →
SALLE 5.00 bits
3.1% →
TOISE 3.64 bits
2.8% →
SCOTE 4.86 bits

Research on ULNAR

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

Optimal play

Opening with ULNAR, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,458 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 ULNAR can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ULNAR 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).