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

EPICS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɛpɪks/

Noun

plural of epic

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

How it sounds

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

Related meanings

Synonyms heroic big LARGE

Opposites little SMALL

Use EPICS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% 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 EPICS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts EPICS 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 84.1% of games, misses completely in 15.9%, and leaves about 178 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,429 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 EPICS 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.

4.71 Entropy (bits)
178 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How EPICS 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,429 Rank among openers
Opening with EPICS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,429 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
872
4 guesses
1,189
5 guesses
211
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
23%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

EPICS can come back 100 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

408 answers
380 answers
163 answers
141 answers
140 answers
81 answers
80 answers
74 answers
65 answers
65 answers
58 answers
51 answers
51 answers
40 answers
37 answers
36 answers
32 answers
31 answers
29 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1P3I1C3S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing EPICS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing EPICS:

17% chance
Suggested:
LAREE
16% chance
Suggested:
TALON
7% chance
Suggested:
SAULT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.1% →
LAREE 5.39 bits
15.9% →
TALON 5.82 bits
6.8% →
SAULT 5.34 bits
5.9% →
REATE 5.06 bits
5.9% →
DROIT 4.99 bits
3.4% →
CAROL 5.03 bits
3.4% →
DINER 4.71 bits
3.1% →
SLART 4.33 bits
2.7% →
POUTY 4.64 bits
2.7% →
LAREE 4.59 bits

Research on EPICS

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

Optimal play

Opening with EPICS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #5,165 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,567 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
EPICS 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 (2.6 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).