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

ALCES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of alce

Noun

genitive of alce

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 ALCES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ALCES 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 88.8% of games, misses completely in 11.2%, and leaves about 98 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,457 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 ALCES 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.

5.32 Entropy (bits)
98 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 96% of evaluated openers
0.62 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ALCES 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#1,457 Rank among openers
Opening with ALCES left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.61 average. It ranks #1,457 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
70
3 guesses
965
4 guesses
1,146
5 guesses
156
6 guesses
15
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
2 vowels
Common:
AELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
29%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

ALCES can come back 106 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

266 answers
192 answers
163 answers
139 answers
124 answers
85 answers
84 answers
83 answers
82 answers
77 answers
65 answers
54 answers
50 answers
48 answers
48 answers
42 answers
42 answers
41 answers
41 answers
31 answers
31 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1L1C3E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing ALCES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ALCES:

11% chance
Suggested:
DONUT
8% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
7% chance
Suggested:
RAINY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.2%
DONUT 5.71 bits
8.1%
TRINE 5.42 bits
6.9%
RAINY 4.88 bits
5.9%
HOIST 5.13 bits
5.2%
TONER 4.35 bits
3.6%
RONTE 4.70 bits
3.5%
DILLY 4.84 bits
3.5%
GRATE 4.63 bits
3.5%
COUNT 4.91 bits
3.2%
STARY 4.47 bits

Research on ALCES

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

Optimal play

Opening with ALCES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #995 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 ALCES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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

Three syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it AYLEHSEEZ. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ALCES 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).