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

WARTS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of wart

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 WARTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WARTS 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 83.4% of games, misses completely in 16.6%, and leaves about 143 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,850 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 WARTS 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.

4.93 Entropy (bits)
143 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 80% of evaluated openers
1.02 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WARTS 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#1,850 Rank among openers
Opening with WARTS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #1,850 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
953
4 guesses
1,179
5 guesses
150
6 guesses
11
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:
ARST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
27%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

WARTS can come back 103 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

395 answers
222 answers
179 answers
155 answers
125 answers
115 answers
100 answers
73 answers
73 answers
69 answers
55 answers
54 answers
45 answers
45 answers
44 answers
41 answers
36 answers
33 answers
33 answers
30 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1R1T1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing WARTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WARTS:

17% chance
Suggested:
CLINE
9% chance
Suggested:
DRIER
8% chance
Suggested:
ALANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.6%
CLINE 6.01 bits
9.4%
DRIER 5.16 bits
7.5%
ALANE 5.50 bits
6.5%
SPILE 5.33 bits
5.3%
TOILE 5.19 bits
4.8%
BRACE 4.65 bits
4.2%
CLINE 4.57 bits
3.1%
SIENT 4.45 bits
3.1%
ROUET 4.60 bits
2.9%
SHULE 4.79 bits

Research on WARTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WARTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,368 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.77 guesses at best and is rank #750 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, 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.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it WAWRTS.

Rhymes with SORTS PORTS FORTS TORTS BORTZ

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WARTS is a kind of bump or state.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WARTS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.4 of 5).

In a sentence

I like Tom, warts and all.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I love my wife as she is, warts and all.
© tatoeba.org contributor ddnktr (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).