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

EMACS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈiːmæks/

Noun

Any implementation or reimplementation of Emacs.

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 EMACS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts EMACS 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 86.9% of games, misses completely in 13.1%, and leaves about 152 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,841 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 EMACS 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.

4.81 Entropy (bits)
152 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 72% of evaluated openers
1.13 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How EMACS 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#4,841 Rank among openers
Opening with EMACS 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 3.67 average. It ranks #4,841 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
75
3 guesses
852
4 guesses
1,216
5 guesses
196
6 guesses
12
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:
AES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
23%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

EMACS can come back 98 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

348 answers
311 answers
199 answers
159 answers
137 answers
136 answers
69 answers
68 answers
63 answers
55 answers
55 answers
51 answers
50 answers
48 answers
46 answers
44 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
31 answers
28 answers
24 answers
19 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1M3A1C3S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing EMACS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing EMACS:

15% chance
Suggested:
DOREE
13% chance
Suggested:
DROIT
8% chance
Suggested:
TALON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.7%
DOREE 5.24 bits
13.1%
DROIT 5.67 bits
8.4%
TALON 5.30 bits
6.7%
SNOUT 4.97 bits
5.8%
SPREE 5.00 bits
5.7%
ALTER 4.73 bits
2.9%
HUMOR 4.65 bits
2.9%
DRAIN 4.42 bits
2.7%
COULD 4.71 bits
2.3%
SALTY 4.61 bits

Research on EMACS

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

Optimal play

Opening with EMACS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,829 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,406 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
EMACS 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.

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).