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

CECUM

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with CECUM Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of caecum.

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 CECUM performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CECUM 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 72.7% of games, misses completely in 27.3%, and leaves about 335 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,669 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

C___M C in the 1st position and M in the 5th position C__U_ C in the 1st position and U in the 4th position _E__M E in the 2nd position and M in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in CECUM.

First-turn measures

All four describe CECUM 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.

3.78 Entropy (bits)
335 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 14% of evaluated openers
2.17 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CECUM 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#12,669 Rank among openers
Opening with CECUM left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.83 average. It ranks #12,669 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
714
4 guesses
1,240
5 guesses
333
6 guesses
28
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
24%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

CECUM can come back 66 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

649 answers
522 answers
181 answers
169 answers
90 answers
86 answers
86 answers
66 answers
62 answers
54 answers
43 answers
35 answers
29 answers
24 answers
20 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3E1C3U1M3
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Try next

ROAST SOLAR SLANT SLART LAIRY STURE

Strategy after playing CECUM

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CECUM:

27% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
22% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR
8% chance
Suggested:
SLANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.3% →
ROAST 6.02 bits
22.0% →
SOLAR 5.35 bits
7.6% →
SLANT 5.23 bits
7.1% →
SLART 4.82 bits
3.8% →
LAIRY 4.89 bits
3.6% →
STURE 4.63 bits
3.6% →
STAIR 4.86 bits
2.8% →
ROANY 4.76 bits
2.6% →
RAILE 4.63 bits
2.3% →
SOLAR 4.41 bits

Research on CECUM

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

Optimal play

Opening with CECUM, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #13,006 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 CECUM can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KEHKUHM. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, CECUM is a kind of cavity.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CECUM 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).