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

FICES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of fice

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

Use FICES in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.0% 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 FICES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FICES 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 83.6% of games, misses completely in 16.4%, and leaves about 166 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,894 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 FICES 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.

4.66 Entropy (bits)
166 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FICES 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,894 Rank among openers
Opening with FICES 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 3.70 average. It ranks #6,894 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
68
3 guesses
821
4 guesses
1,229
5 guesses
220
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
28%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

FICES can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

392 answers
300 answers
196 answers
169 answers
137 answers
133 answers
122 answers
78 answers
78 answers
69 answers
58 answers
52 answers
45 answers
40 answers
38 answers
28 answers
27 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4I1C3E1S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing FICES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FICES:

16% chance
Suggested:
TALON
13% chance
Suggested:
LEARE
8% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.4% →
TALON 5.80 bits
12.6% →
LEARE 5.50 bits
8.2% →
SLART 5.28 bits
7.1% →
OATER 4.28 bits
5.7% →
TRAIN 5.31 bits
5.6% →
SLART 4.93 bits
5.1% →
CAROL 5.09 bits
3.3% →
TARGE 4.29 bits
3.3% →
DIRTY 4.03 bits
2.9% →
CRATE 4.87 bits

Research on FICES

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

Optimal play

Opening with FICES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #5,941 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,719 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT).