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

CRITS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of crit

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

Use CRITS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.6% 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 CRITS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CRITS 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 83.9% of games, misses completely in 16.1%, and leaves about 129 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #105 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.56 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 CRITS 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.

5.15 Entropy (bits)
129 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CRITS 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.

3.56 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#105 Rank among openers
Opening with CRITS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.56 average. It ranks #105 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
1,110
4 guesses
1,026
5 guesses
149
6 guesses
13

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
IRST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
32%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

CRITS can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

383 answers
224 answers
172 answers
116 answers
115 answers
89 answers
78 answers
68 answers
67 answers
62 answers
60 answers
58 answers
50 answers
48 answers
47 answers
37 answers
33 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3R1I1T1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing CRITS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CRITS:

16% chance
Suggested:
ALONE
9% chance
Suggested:
REBAR
7% chance
Suggested:
SLANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.1% →
ALONE 6.05 bits
9.4% →
REBAR 5.13 bits
7.2% →
SLANE 5.48 bits
4.9% →
LIANE 5.05 bits
4.8% →
LEANT 5.21 bits
3.7% →
DIANE 4.84 bits
3.3% →
LEANT 4.75 bits
2.9% →
HAOLE 4.95 bits
2.8% →
PORAE 4.82 bits
2.6% →
ALONE 5.09 bits

Research on CRITS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CRITS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #805 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.72 guesses at best and is rank #99 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.56, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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
CRITS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).