5 FiveLetterWords
Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

FICUS

FICUS is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 88.4% of possible answers.

Open Solver with FICUS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈfaɪkəs/

Noun

Any plant belonging to the genus Ficus, including the rubber plant, of species Ficus elastica.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 FICUS performs as a guess

FICUS is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 72.2% of games, misses completely in 27.8%, and leaves about 274 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,671 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

F___S F in the 1st position and S in the 5th position F__U_ F in the 1st position and U in the 4th position _I__S I in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in FICUS.

First-turn measures

All four describe FICUS 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.

4.11 Entropy (bits)
274 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
88.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 28% of evaluated openers
1.84 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FICUS 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#8,671 Rank among openers
Opening with FICUS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,671 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
806
4 guesses
1,254
5 guesses
232
6 guesses
17
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:
ISU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
19%
All gray
28%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I M Y
F I C U S

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches FICUS in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

FICUS can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

660 answers
282 answers
196 answers
165 answers
162 answers
124 answers
82 answers
77 answers
58 answers
47 answers
46 answers
44 answers
32 answers
30 answers
30 answers
27 answers
25 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4I1C3U1S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Try next

ALTER STARE TRINE PORTE CRANE RONTE

Strategy after playing FICUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FICUS:

28% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
12% chance
Suggested:
STARE
8% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.8% →
ALTER 6.06 bits
11.9% →
STARE 5.72 bits
8.3% →
TRINE 5.50 bits
7.0% →
PORTE 4.94 bits
6.8% →
CRANE 5.53 bits
5.2% →
RONTE 4.73 bits
3.5% →
PALET 4.68 bits
3.2% →
SLART 4.39 bits
2.4% →
CLINE 4.29 bits
2.0% →
CLONE 4.17 bits

Research on FICUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with FICUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,757 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,108 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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 FIHKUHS. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FICUS 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).