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

ACING

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈeɪ.sɪŋ/

Verb

present participle and gerund of ace

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Related meanings

Synonyms i one single star SUPER champion

Opposites inferior

In a sentence

Michael was acing the competition.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use ACING in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.7% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

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

How ACING performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ACING 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 79.5% of games, misses completely in 20.5%, and leaves about 199 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,886 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 ACING 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.

4.55 Entropy (bits)
199 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ACING 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,886 Rank among openers
Opening with ACING left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,886 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
856
4 guesses
1,223
5 guesses
200
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
23%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

ACING can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

489 answers
358 answers
145 answers
124 answers
116 answers
107 answers
102 answers
83 answers
71 answers
60 answers
53 answers
52 answers
49 answers
47 answers
37 answers
35 answers
29 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1C3I1N1G2
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing ACING

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ACING:

21% chance
Suggested:
SOREL
15% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
6% chance
Suggested:
TILDE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.5% →
SOREL 6.10 bits
15.0% →
TARSE 5.69 bits
6.1% →
TILDE 5.07 bits
5.2% →
CHORE 5.34 bits
4.9% →
CHARE 4.81 bits
4.5% →
STOLE 4.98 bits
4.3% →
SOWER 5.10 bits
3.5% →
LOURE 5.28 bits
3.0% →
BLORE 4.96 bits
2.5% →
SOREL 4.68 bits

Research on ACING

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

Optimal play

Opening with ACING, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,108 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,124 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ACING 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 (2.1 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); 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).