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

CEILS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of ceil

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 CEILS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CEILS 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 87.3% of games, misses completely in 12.7%, and leaves about 111 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,117 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 CEILS 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.

5.26 Entropy (bits)
111 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 94% of evaluated openers
0.69 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CEILS 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#1,117 Rank among openers
Opening with CEILS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #1,117 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
73
3 guesses
1,003
4 guesses
1,080
5 guesses
179
6 guesses
17
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:
EILS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
35%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

CEILS can come back 109 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

301 answers
250 answers
154 answers
119 answers
113 answers
105 answers
92 answers
89 answers
56 answers
56 answers
55 answers
51 answers
42 answers
42 answers
42 answers
42 answers
40 answers
38 answers
35 answers
32 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3E1I1L1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing CEILS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CEILS:

13% chance
Suggested:
MOURN
11% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
6% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.7%
MOURN 5.62 bits
10.5%
ORATE 5.26 bits
6.5%
ROAST 5.26 bits
5.0%
STRAE 4.98 bits
4.8%
DROIT 5.01 bits
4.4%
BLOAT 4.89 bits
3.9%
REATE 4.62 bits
3.7%
RANEE 4.38 bits
2.4%
TRONE 4.28 bits
2.4%
RIDGE 4.25 bits

Research on CEILS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CEILS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,106 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.75 guesses at best and is rank #347 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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

One syllable Say it SEELZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.