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

FLAMS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of flam

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 FLAMS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FLAMS 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 76.5% of games, misses completely in 23.5%, and leaves about 222 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,809 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 FLAMS 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.

4.42 Entropy (bits)
222 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 46% of evaluated openers
1.53 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FLAMS 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
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#4,809 Rank among openers
Opening with FLAMS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #4,809 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
884
4 guesses
1,218
5 guesses
188
6 guesses
10
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
1 vowels
Common:
ALS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
26%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

FLAMS can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

558 answers
258 answers
250 answers
171 answers
108 answers
108 answers
82 answers
76 answers
66 answers
53 answers
52 answers
47 answers
40 answers
32 answers
30 answers
28 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4L1A1M3S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing FLAMS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FLAMS:

24% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
11% chance
Suggested:
RUOTE
11% chance
Suggested:
TONER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.5%
TRONE 6.20 bits
10.9%
RUOTE 5.51 bits
10.5%
TONER 5.48 bits
7.2%
LIBEL 5.02 bits
4.5%
DRICE 4.99 bits
4.5%
TALER 4.58 bits
3.5%
TONER 5.25 bits
3.2%
SATER 4.74 bits
2.8%
STURE 4.11 bits
2.2%
CARNE 4.52 bits

Research on FLAMS

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

Optimal play

Opening with FLAMS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,425 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.82 guesses at best and is rank #1,954 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 3.72, 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.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it FLAMZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FLAMS 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).