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

JELLO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈd͡ʒɛloʊ//ˈd͡ʒɛləʊ/

Noun

A dessert made by boiling gelatine, sugar and some flavoring (often derived from fruit) and allowing it to set.

Alternative forms: Jell-O

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 JELLO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts JELLO 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 76.8% of games, misses completely in 23.2%, and leaves about 297 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,384 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.94 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 JELLO 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.

3.71 Entropy (bits)
297 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 12% of evaluated openers
2.24 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How JELLO 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.

3.94 Avg guesses
99.66% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#14,384 Rank among openers
Opening with JELLO left 8 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.75 means those games clustered within about 0.75 of a guess of the 3.94 average. It ranks #14,384 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
564
4 guesses
1,287
5 guesses
411
6 guesses
45
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ELO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
23%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

JELLO can come back 57 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

551 answers
456 answers
311 answers
163 answers
150 answers
149 answers
108 answers
69 answers
44 answers
40 answers
40 answers
38 answers
29 answers
25 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
9 answers
8 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
4 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

J8E1L1L1O1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing JELLO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing JELLO:

23% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
19% chance
Suggested:
STAIR
13% chance
Suggested:
THORN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.2%
SAINT 6.14 bits
19.2%
STAIR 5.51 bits
13.1%
THORN 5.12 bits
6.9%
REATE 4.61 bits
6.3%
SLAIN 5.02 bits
6.3%
TORSE 4.54 bits
4.5%
ARENE 4.47 bits
2.9%
CORAL 4.22 bits
1.9%
SAUCY 4.20 bits
1.7%
RATIO 4.20 bits

Research on JELLO

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

Optimal play

Opening with JELLO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.92 guesses and ranks #14,172 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 JELLO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.94; proven optimal play reaches 3.92. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 JEHLOH.

Rhymes with CELLO BELLO

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, JELLO is a kind of substance.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
JELLO 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

Why would you put meat in jello?
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I put the jello in the refrigerator.
© tatoeba.org contributor OsoHombre (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).