ADDER
ADDER is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈædɚ/
- Noun
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A name loosely applied to various snakes more or less resembling a viper.
- Noun
-
A sea stickleback or adder fish (Spinachia spinachia).
Alternative forms: edder
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English nadder, addere, rebracketing of “a naddere” as “an addere”, from Old English nǣdre (“snake”), from Proto-West Germanic *nadrā, from Proto-Germanic *nadrǭ, from pre-Germanic *néh₁treh₂, variant of Proto-Indo-European *n̥h₁trih₂, from *(s)neh₁- (“to spin, twist”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it ADUR.
Rhymes with MADAR
In a sentence
We ran into a black adder in England.
The common adder is ovoviviparous.
Use ADDER in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 92.4% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →ADDER in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #296
Reveal this appearance's category
ADDER appeared in KINDS OF SNAKES (green group).
How ADDER performs as a guess
Wordle accepts ADDER 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 82.2% of games, misses completely in 17.8%, and leaves about 181 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,830 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe ADDER 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How ADDER 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Feedback distribution
ADDER can come back 80 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for ADDER; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing ADDER
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to ADDER.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing ADDER:
Research on ADDER
Game-tree analysis and word research for ADDER, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with ADDER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,885 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 ADDER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.78; proven optimal play reaches 3.76. 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- ADDER 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.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).