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

WORTS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /wɜːts//wɔːts//wɝts/

Noun

plural of wort

Noun

A soup or stew made with worts (“vegetables”) and other ingredients such as meat.

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 WORTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WORTS 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 80.2% of games, misses completely in 19.8%, and leaves about 176 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,729 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 WORTS 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.

4.75 Entropy (bits)
176 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 69% of evaluated openers
1.20 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WORTS 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#4,729 Rank among openers
Opening with WORTS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #4,729 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
930
4 guesses
1,139
5 guesses
212
6 guesses
19
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:
ORST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
26%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

WORTS can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

471 answers
262 answers
196 answers
158 answers
107 answers
96 answers
87 answers
86 answers
81 answers
61 answers
53 answers
52 answers
36 answers
36 answers
33 answers
31 answers
29 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4O1R1T1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing WORTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WORTS:

20% chance
Suggested:
LIANE
11% chance
Suggested:
LAIDE
8% chance
Suggested:
SLANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.8%
LIANE 6.21 bits
11.0%
LAIDE 5.32 bits
8.3%
SLANE 5.48 bits
6.7%
NAICE 5.30 bits
4.5%
ALINE 5.35 bits
4.0%
GLACE 4.52 bits
3.7%
ARIEL 4.68 bits
3.6%
CADIE 4.12 bits
3.4%
LEANT 4.92 bits
2.6%
CADRE 4.44 bits

Research on WORTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WORTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,500 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #965 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, 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 WURTS.

Rhymes with HURTS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WORTS is a kind of herb or malt.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WORTS 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 (2.5 of 5).

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).