BLESS
BLESS is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /blɛs/
- Verb
-
To make something holy by religious rite, sanctify.
- Verb
-
To invoke divine favor upon.
“In some countries, priests bless farm animals on St. Anthony's Day.”
- Interjection
-
Used as an expression of endearment, gratitude, or (ironically) belittlement.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English blessen, from Old English bletsian (“to consecrate (with blood)”), from Proto-West Germanic *blōdisōn (“to sprinkle, mark or hallow with blood”), from Proto-Germanic *blōþą (“blood”), of uncertain origin, possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleh₃- (“to bloom”). Cognate with Old Norse bleza (“to bless”) (whence Icelandic blessa), Old English blēdan (“to bleed”). More at bleed.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it BLEHS.
Rhymes with GUESS PRESS DRESS CHESS CRESS
Related meanings
Synonyms sign
Opposites CURSE
In a sentence
God bless all of you.
He will take it and bless it.
Use BLESS in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 89.2% 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
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
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 →How BLESS performs as a guess
BLESS is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 76.9% of games, misses completely in 23.1%, and leaves about 258 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,810 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 BLESS 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 BLESS 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
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches BLESS in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
BLESS can come back 72 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 BLESS; 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 BLESS
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BLESS.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BLESS:
Research on BLESS
Game-tree analysis and word research for BLESS, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BLESS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,513 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,344 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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
- BLESS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 15 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 27 of 100. Raters found it difficult to picture.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).