Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess B tier for first-turn info

UNLIT

Yes, UNLIT was the Wordle answer on February 4, 2023 (Wordle #595).

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Not lit

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: February 4, 2023 (#595).

See the full page for that puzzle: February 4, 2023 (#595).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How UNLIT performs as a guess

UNLIT is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 81.0% of games, misses completely in 19.0%, and leaves about 159 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,546 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 UNLIT 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.

4.85 Entropy (bits)
159 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
93.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 75% of evaluated openers
1.09 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How UNLIT 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,546 Rank among openers
Opening with UNLIT 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 3.61 average. It ranks #1,546 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
1,003
4 guesses
1,081
5 guesses
187
6 guesses
16
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:
ILNTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
24%
All gray
19%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S H U N T
U N F I T
U N L I T

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches UNLIT in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

UNLIT can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

451 answers
205 answers
168 answers
148 answers
142 answers
141 answers
80 answers
73 answers
64 answers
55 answers
54 answers
53 answers
51 answers
43 answers
40 answers
39 answers
36 answers
32 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

U1N1L1I1T1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing UNLIT

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing UNLIT:

19% chance
Suggested:
CARSE
9% chance
Suggested:
SOARE
7% chance
Suggested:
TARTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.0%
CARSE 6.22 bits
8.6%
SOARE 5.33 bits
7.1%
TARTE 5.76 bits
6.2%
AROSE 5.23 bits
6.0%
SPIRE 5.25 bits
5.9%
MORSE 5.19 bits
3.4%
GRONE 4.55 bits
3.1%
SCARE 5.24 bits
2.7%
CARLE 4.38 bits
2.3%
CLOSE 4.23 bits

Research on UNLIT

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

Optimal play

Opening with UNLIT, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #3,012 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 UNLIT can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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 second syllable Say it UHNLIHT. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

Synonyms dark

Opposites LIGHT

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
UNLIT 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.7 of 5).

In a sentence

The path through the forest was unlit and scary.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).