GRIME
Yes, GRIME was the Wordle answer on December 3, 2021 (Wordle #167).
As an opener, it rules out about 93.9% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ɡɹaɪm/
- Noun
-
Dirt, grease, soot, etc. that is ingrained and difficult to remove.
“Underneath all that soot, dirt and grime is the true beauty of the church in soft shades of sandstone.”
- Noun
-
A genre of urban music that emerged in London, England, in the early 2000s, primarily a development of UK garage, dancehall, and hip hop.
- Verb
-
To begrime; to cake with dirt.
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
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: December 3, 2021 (#167).
See the full page for that puzzle: December 3, 2021 (#167).
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 GRIME performs as a guess
GRIME 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 83.1% of games, misses completely in 16.9%, and leaves about 145 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,719 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 GRIME 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 GRIME 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 GRIME in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
GRIME can come back 112 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 GRIME; 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 GRIME
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to GRIME.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing GRIME:
Research on GRIME
Game-tree analysis and word research for GRIME, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with GRIME, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,511 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 GRIME can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, GRIME is a kind of status or change.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- GRIME sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once 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: 71 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.2 of 5).
In a sentence
Tom is covered in dirt and grime.
Sweep regularly to prevent dirt and grime from accumulating.
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).