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

ERGON

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Work, measured in terms of the quantity of heat to which it is equivalent.

Noun

A task or function of a creature.

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Ancient Greek ἔργον (érgon). Doublet of erg and work.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use ERGON in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.8% 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 ERGON performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ERGON 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 85.1% of games, misses completely in 14.9%, and leaves about 148 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,707 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 ERGON 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.

4.97 Entropy (bits)
148 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ERGON 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
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,707 Rank among openers
Opening with ERGON 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,707 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
70
3 guesses
940
4 guesses
1,146
5 guesses
182
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
25%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

ERGON can come back 113 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

356 answers
311 answers
189 answers
156 answers
124 answers
123 answers
75 answers
67 answers
65 answers
65 answers
59 answers
50 answers
38 answers
38 answers
37 answers
34 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1R1G2O1N1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing ERGON

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ERGON:

15% chance
Suggested:
SLATY
13% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
8% chance
Suggested:
SETAE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.9% →
SLATY 5.84 bits
13.0% →
SLATE 5.91 bits
7.9% →
SETAE 4.71 bits
6.5% →
SLATY 5.07 bits
5.2% →
SAINT 5.12 bits
5.2% →
SLATY 5.05 bits
3.1% →
ANISE 4.54 bits
2.8% →
CADIE 4.40 bits
2.7% →
COAST 4.41 bits
2.7% →
SOLVE 4.31 bits

Research on ERGON

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

Optimal play

Opening with ERGON, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,385 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 ERGON can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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
ERGON 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).