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

BIFID

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Cleft; divided into two principal or main parts, such as two lobes.

“bifid tongue”

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

Related meanings

Synonyms compound

Opposites simple

Use BIFID in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 74.2% 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 BIFID performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BIFID 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 51.5% of games, misses completely in 48.5%, and leaves about 615 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,970 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.90 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 BIFID 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.

3.17 Entropy (bits)
615 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
74.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BIFID 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.

3.90 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#13,970 Rank among openers
Opening with BIFID left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.90 average. It ranks #13,970 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
637
4 guesses
1,244
5 guesses
400
6 guesses
35

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
I

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
52%
Green tile
26%
All gray
48%

Feedback distribution

BIFID can come back 61 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1157 answers
205 answers
161 answers
123 answers
112 answers
111 answers
86 answers
63 answers
51 answers
32 answers
29 answers
25 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3I1F4I1D2
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing BIFID

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BIFID:

49% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
9% chance
Suggested:
SNARE
7% chance
Suggested:
DROLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

48.5% →
TARSE 6.32 bits
8.6% →
SNARE 5.14 bits
6.8% →
DROLE 5.27 bits
5.2% →
PATER 4.67 bits
4.7% →
HAOLE 5.11 bits
4.7% →
ALURE 5.21 bits
3.6% →
COAST 5.10 bits
2.6% →
ALURE 5.20 bits
2.1% →
SONAR 4.78 bits
1.3% →
RONTE 4.16 bits

Research on BIFID

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

Optimal play

Opening with BIFID, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.88 guesses and ranks #13,408 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 BIFID can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.90; proven optimal play reaches 3.88. 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
BIFID 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).