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

GOMER

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A conical chamber at the breech of the bore in heavy ordnance, especially in mortars.

Noun

A stupid, awkward, or oafish person.

Alternative forms: gomere

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

Uncertain. Perhaps the same as, or influenced by Etymology 3, above. It is frequently claimed that the word is an acronym for "grand old man of the emergency room", or for "Get Out of My ER", the latter story popularized by the 1978 novel The House of God by Samuel Shem. John Algeo (1991) notes that various people claim the word is an acronym or is borrowed from Hebrew גמר (G-M-R, “finish; complete”), but suggests that these accounts are dubious.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it GOHMUR.

Rhymes with HOMER ROMER

Use GOMER in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.3% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

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

How GOMER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GOMER 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 82.8% of games, misses completely in 17.2%, and leaves about 160 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,466 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 GOMER 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.

4.88 Entropy (bits)
160 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GOMER 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#3,466 Rank among openers
Opening with GOMER 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 3.64 average. It ranks #3,466 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
922
4 guesses
1,165
5 guesses
188
6 guesses
13

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
32%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

GOMER can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

409 answers
303 answers
178 answers
144 answers
122 answers
99 answers
93 answers
89 answers
70 answers
61 answers
58 answers
49 answers
44 answers
42 answers
35 answers
34 answers
28 answers
26 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2O1M3E1R1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing GOMER

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GOMER:

17% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
13% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
7% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.2% →
SAINT 6.05 bits
12.7% →
SLATE 5.82 bits
7.5% →
SAINT 5.33 bits
6.0% →
TEASE 4.81 bits
5.1% →
SLANT 5.13 bits
4.2% →
SALTY 4.50 bits
3.9% →
SAINT 3.70 bits
3.7% →
SLANT 4.89 bits
2.9% →
DROIT 4.09 bits
2.6% →
SAUCY 4.68 bits

Research on GOMER

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

Optimal play

Opening with GOMER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,528 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with GOMER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GOMER 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).