built B₃U₁I₁L₁T₁

BUILT is the past form of build, and it carries a second use as an adjective for a muscular or toned frame, as in well-built. With a frequency rank of 858 it is one of the more common five-letter words. The U and I in the middle make it a decent vowel probe.

BUILT at a glance

• BUILT has five letters: B, U, I, L, T.
• Its base Scrabble score is 7, with B worth 3 and the other four tiles worth 1.
• Neighbours are BUILD, GUILT, QUILT and BUIST; no anagrams exist.
• It is a Wordle answer and ranks 858 in frequency, with a count of 39,041.

Is BUILT a good Wordle guess?

It tests two vowels, U and I, plus L and T, which are common consonants. It leaves out A and E entirely, so the guess only half-covers the vowels.

Pair it with a word that carries A and E, then use the leftover consonants to cut down the neighbours: BUILD, GUILT and QUILT differ at one position only.

How do the neighbours of BUILT compare?

BUILD changes the last tile from T to D and is worth 8, since D scores 2. GUILT swaps B for G and scores 6, which makes BUILT 1 point richer. QUILT swaps in Q and reaches 14, the biggest of the group by far.

BUIST is the odd one out, so check your game’s word list before playing it. In Wordle terms, a green U in second place keeps all four neighbours alive, so the first letter decides the rest.

What rhymes with BUILT?

The -ILT ending links BUILT to GUILT, TILT, REBUILT, QUILT and WILT. Among five-letter words, 887 begin with B, about 7 percent, and 721 end in T, about 6 percent. That makes a T finish a reasonably wide net when you narrow down a Wordle board.