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

GEIST

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɡaɪst/

Noun

A ghost, an apparition.

Noun

Spirit (of a group, age, era, etc).

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 GEIST performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GEIST 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 84.7% of games, misses completely in 15.3%, and leaves about 125 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,059 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 GEIST 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.

5.22 Entropy (bits)
125 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 92% of evaluated openers
0.73 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GEIST 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,059 Rank among openers
Opening with GEIST left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #1,059 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
74
3 guesses
986
4 guesses
1,116
5 guesses
158
6 guesses
18
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:
EIST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
37%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

GEIST can come back 117 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

363 answers
262 answers
122 answers
117 answers
115 answers
99 answers
77 answers
74 answers
62 answers
59 answers
48 answers
47 answers
44 answers
43 answers
42 answers
41 answers
39 answers
38 answers
36 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
31 answers
29 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2E1I1S1T1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing GEIST

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GEIST:

15% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
11% chance
Suggested:
LAREE
5% chance
Suggested:
COALY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.3%
CAROL 6.02 bits
11.0%
LAREE 5.17 bits
5.1%
COALY 4.95 bits
4.9%
CLARY 4.90 bits
4.8%
NADIR 4.85 bits
4.2%
TUTOR 4.80 bits
3.2%
PARLE 4.74 bits
3.1%
TARTE 4.77 bits
2.6%
DINER 4.55 bits
2.5%
CLARY 4.61 bits

Research on GEIST

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

Optimal play

Opening with GEIST, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,177 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.77 guesses at best and is rank #676 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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 GYST.

Rhymes with HEIST DICED FEIST

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GEIST 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).