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

USQUE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 84.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈʌskweɪ/

Noun

whisky

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 USQUE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts USQUE 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 70.9% of games, misses completely in 29.1%, and leaves about 379 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,761 of 14,855 openers, averaging 4.04 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 USQUE 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.

3.26 Entropy (bits)
379 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 3% of evaluated openers
2.69 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How USQUE 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.

4.04 Avg guesses
99.75% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#14,761 Rank among openers
Opening with USQUE left 6 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 4.04 average. It ranks #14,761 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
440
4 guesses
1,337
5 guesses
482
6 guesses
56
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

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
ESU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
23%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

USQUE can come back 43 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

690 answers
483 answers
272 answers
229 answers
178 answers
114 answers
102 answers
65 answers
44 answers
28 answers
20 answers
20 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

U1S1Q10U1E1
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing USQUE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing USQUE:

29% chance
Suggested:
TALON
20% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
11% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.1%
TALON 5.83 bits
20.3%
ALTER 5.29 bits
11.5%
SLART 5.23 bits
9.6%
ARIEL 4.32 bits
7.5%
TRULY 4.58 bits
4.8%
ROAST 4.42 bits
4.3%
STEER 4.69 bits
2.7%
SHUNT 4.16 bits
1.9%
GRACE 3.55 bits
1.2%
CLOUT 4.14 bits

Research on USQUE

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

Optimal play

Opening with USQUE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 4.03 guesses and ranks #14,751 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 USQUE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 4.04; proven optimal play reaches 4.03. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 SUHSK. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
USQUE 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).