5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

GOLEM

Yes, GOLEM was the Wordle answer on September 14, 2021 (Wordle #87).

As an opener, it rules out about 93.1% of possible answers.

Open Solver with GOLEM Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɡəʊ.ləm//ˈɡɒl.əm//ˈɡoʊ.ləm/

Noun

A humanoid creature made from clay, animated by magic.

Noun

A humanoid creature made from any previously inanimate matter, such as wood or stone, animated by magic.

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

Used once

Past Wordle answer: September 14, 2021 (#87).

See the full page for that puzzle: September 14, 2021 (#87).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

Wordle Observatory · optional

Played this Wordle?

Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds

Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.

See the public data

The Observatory retains the selected puzzle, result, rating, optional Hard Mode answer and a random one-puzzle receipt. It stores no answer word, grid, guesses, account, email, IP-derived ID or reusable player identifier.

How verification and withdrawal work

The answer word and timezone are used transiently to verify this page, then discarded. The receipt prevents duplicate submissions and lets this browser withdraw later; anyone with that token can withdraw, so keep browser-data exports private. Read the full privacy details.

How GOLEM performs as a guess

GOLEM 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 83.4% of games, misses completely in 16.6%, and leaves about 163 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,809 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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.

G___M G in the 1st position and M in the 5th position G__E_ G in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _O__M O in the 2nd position and M in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe GOLEM 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.

4.80 Entropy (bits)
163 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
93.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 71% of evaluated openers
1.15 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GOLEM 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#2,809 Rank among openers
Opening with GOLEM left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,809 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
67
3 guesses
919
4 guesses
1,180
5 guesses
177
6 guesses
9
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:
ELO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
33%
All gray
17%

Example solver route

R O A T E
V I N Y L
G O L E M

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches GOLEM in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

GOLEM can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

395 answers
323 answers
165 answers
155 answers
153 answers
109 answers
101 answers
73 answers
70 answers
51 answers
48 answers
45 answers
43 answers
38 answers
37 answers
29 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2O1L1E1M3
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

SAINT REAST ARSON STAIR TEASE SHART

Strategy after playing GOLEM

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GOLEM:

17% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
14% chance
Suggested:
REAST
7% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.6% →
SAINT 6.20 bits
13.6% →
REAST 5.66 bits
7.0% →
SAINT 5.17 bits
6.5% →
ARSON 5.22 bits
6.4% →
STAIR 4.72 bits
4.6% →
TEASE 4.81 bits
4.3% →
SHART 4.61 bits
3.1% →
SNARE 4.41 bits
2.9% →
SAUCY 4.79 bits
2.1% →
LEPER 3.73 bits

Research on GOLEM

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

Optimal play

Opening with GOLEM, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,729 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,276 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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 GOHLUHM.

Rhymes with SOLUM

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, GOLEM is a kind of vision or mechanism.

Synonyms ROBOT

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GOLEM 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.

In a sentence

The golem is out of control.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The city is protected by a golem.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).