GLOOM
Yes, GLOOM was the Wordle answer on June 6, 2022 (Wordle #352).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ɡluːm//ɡlum/
- Noun
-
Darkness, dimness, or obscurity.
“the gloom of a forest, or of midnight”
- Noun
-
A depressing, despondent, or melancholic atmosphere.
- Verb
-
To be dark or gloomy.
- Verb
-
To look or feel sad, sullen or despondent.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English *gloom, *glom, from Old English glōm (“gloaming, twilight, darkness”), from Proto-West Germanic *glōm, from Proto-Germanic *glōmaz (“gleam, shimmer, sheen”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰley- (“to gleam, shimmer, glow”). The English word is cognate with Norwegian glom (“transparent membrane”), Scots gloam (“twilight; faint light; dull gleam”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it GLOOM.
Rhymes with BLOOM GROOM BROOM PLUME FLUME
In a sentence
A grey gloom fell over the village.
When you were a child you feared the gloom.
Use GLOOM in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 83.4% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: June 6, 2022 (#352).
See the full page for that puzzle: June 6, 2022 (#352).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How GLOOM performs as a guess
GLOOM is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 63.2% of games, misses completely in 36.8%, and leaves about 397 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,037 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe GLOOM 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How GLOOM 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches GLOOM in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
GLOOM can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for GLOOM; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing GLOOM
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to GLOOM.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing GLOOM:
Research on GLOOM
Game-tree analysis and word research for GLOOM, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with GLOOM, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,132 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.91 guesses at best and is rank #4,430 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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
- GLOOM sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 8, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 46 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).