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

CHEMO

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkiːməʊ//ˈkimoʊ/

Noun

Clipping of chemotherapy.

Verb

To treat with chemotherapy.

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

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KEEMOH.

Rhymes with PRIMO

In a sentence

I don't want to treat myself with chemo anymore.
© tatoeba.org contributor felidad (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Bruno is starting chemo soon.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use CHEMO in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.6% 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 CHEMO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CHEMO 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 81.4% of games, misses completely in 18.6%, and leaves about 224 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,866 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 CHEMO 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.

4.49 Entropy (bits)
224 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CHEMO 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#6,866 Rank among openers
Opening with CHEMO solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,866 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
866
4 guesses
1,172
5 guesses
244
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
23%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

CHEMO can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

467 answers
443 answers
245 answers
128 answers
107 answers
63 answers
59 answers
55 answers
51 answers
50 answers
47 answers
39 answers
36 answers
33 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
28 answers
25 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3H4E1M3O1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing CHEMO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CHEMO:

20% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
19% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
10% chance
Suggested:
DROOL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.6% →
RAILE 5.51 bits
18.6% →
SAINT 6.20 bits
10.3% →
DROOL 5.09 bits
5.4% →
RONTE 4.50 bits
4.5% →
SLART 5.09 bits
2.6% →
SLART 4.96 bits
2.5% →
SLART 4.84 bits
2.3% →
RATEL 4.68 bits
2.1% →
RAILE 4.57 bits
2.1% →
SADLY 4.58 bits

Research on CHEMO

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

Optimal play

Opening with CHEMO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,242 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #3,005 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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
CHEMO sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (3.7 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).