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

CRISS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of kris (“dagger”).

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 CRISS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CRISS 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 77.2% of games, misses completely in 22.8%, and leaves about 218 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,616 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 CRISS 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.

4.34 Entropy (bits)
218 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 41% of evaluated openers
1.60 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CRISS 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,616 Rank among openers
Opening with CRISS left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,616 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
30
3 guesses
890
4 guesses
1,181
5 guesses
223
6 guesses
27
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
1 vowels
Common:
IRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
32%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

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

542 answers
293 answers
202 answers
180 answers
121 answers
93 answers
91 answers
78 answers
74 answers
67 answers
55 answers
44 answers
44 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
25 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3R1I1S1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing CRISS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CRISS:

23% chance
Suggested:
ALONE
12% chance
Suggested:
TERRA
9% chance
Suggested:
PLATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.8%
ALONE 6.05 bits
12.3%
TERRA 5.35 bits
8.5%
PLATE 5.59 bits
7.6%
TILDE 5.25 bits
5.1%
ATONE 4.83 bits
3.9%
HAOLE 5.07 bits
3.8%
ALONE 5.08 bits
3.3%
POTAE 4.86 bits
3.1%
ALONE 5.10 bits
2.8%
RIVET 4.42 bits

Research on CRISS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CRISS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,504 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.93 guesses at best and is rank #4,793 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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 KRIHS.

Rhymes with SWISS BLISS ABYSS AMISS

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CRISS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

The country is criss-crossed by a large number of railways lines.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I watched the sunlight criss-cross the lawn, wishing to be anywhere but here.
© tatoeba.org contributor letsgolanguages (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).