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

ICERS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of icer

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 ICERS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ICERS 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 88.8% of games, misses completely in 11.2%, and leaves about 119 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,906 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 ICERS 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.

5.00 Entropy (bits)
119 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 83% of evaluated openers
0.95 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ICERS 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#2,906 Rank among openers
Opening with ICERS left 1 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 #2,906 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
71
3 guesses
923
4 guesses
1,166
5 guesses
178
6 guesses
15
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:
EIRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
17%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

ICERS can come back 96 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

265 answers
232 answers
174 answers
162 answers
151 answers
147 answers
97 answers
89 answers
84 answers
70 answers
64 answers
55 answers
54 answers
53 answers
45 answers
39 answers
37 answers
36 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
27 answers
26 answers
23 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1C3E1R1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing ICERS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ICERS:

11% chance
Suggested:
GLOAT
10% chance
Suggested:
TABLE
7% chance
Suggested:
PATEE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.2%
GLOAT 5.71 bits
9.8%
TABLE 5.37 bits
7.3%
PATEE 4.60 bits
6.8%
TIDAL 4.93 bits
6.4%
SLANT 5.26 bits
6.2%
BARON 5.02 bits
4.1%
COALY 4.88 bits
3.7%
SLATE 4.83 bits
3.5%
ANILE 4.42 bits
2.9%
SPILT 4.40 bits

Research on ICERS

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

Optimal play

Opening with ICERS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #5,042 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 ICERS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 YSURZ. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ICERS sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).