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

DELIS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of deli

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

Use DELIS 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 DELIS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DELIS 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 86.3% of games, misses completely in 13.7%, and leaves about 129 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,705 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 DELIS 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.

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

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DELIS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,705 Rank among openers
Opening with DELIS 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,705 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
71
3 guesses
939
4 guesses
1,140
5 guesses
186
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EILS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
25%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

DELIS can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

326 answers
256 answers
176 answers
134 answers
130 answers
128 answers
104 answers
90 answers
84 answers
58 answers
58 answers
52 answers
45 answers
45 answers
44 answers
37 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2E1L1I1S1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing DELIS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DELIS:

14% chance
Suggested:
COURT
11% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
7% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.7% →
COURT 5.87 bits
10.7% →
ORATE 5.30 bits
7.4% →
ROAST 5.24 bits
5.6% →
CLOUT 4.82 bits
5.5% →
SHART 5.02 bits
5.4% →
PRINT 5.06 bits
4.4% →
RANEE 4.44 bits
3.8% →
REATE 4.64 bits
3.5% →
TRINE 4.68 bits
2.4% →
STINK 4.28 bits

Research on DELIS

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

Optimal play

Opening with DELIS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,845 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 DELIS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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
DELIS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).

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