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

JELLS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of jell

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 JELLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts JELLS 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 73.9% of games, misses completely in 26.1%, and leaves about 312 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,123 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.91 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 JELLS 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.

3.68 Entropy (bits)
312 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 11% of evaluated openers
2.27 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How JELLS 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.

3.91 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#14,123 Rank among openers
Opening with JELLS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.91 average. It ranks #14,123 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
27
3 guesses
602
4 guesses
1,305
5 guesses
390
6 guesses
28
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
1 vowels
Common:
ELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
22%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

JELLS can come back 51 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

619 answers
429 answers
261 answers
174 answers
173 answers
142 answers
115 answers
45 answers
41 answers
36 answers
34 answers
34 answers
30 answers
22 answers
21 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

J8E1L1L1S1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing JELLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing JELLS:

26% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
18% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
11% chance
Suggested:
STAIR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.1%
TRAIN 6.01 bits
18.1%
ORATE 5.25 bits
11.0%
STAIR 5.25 bits
7.3%
STAIR 4.84 bits
7.3%
CLAIM 4.82 bits
6.0%
REATE 4.49 bits
4.8%
ARENE 4.43 bits
1.9%
DAILY 4.00 bits
1.7%
SLAIN 4.06 bits
1.5%
REATE 3.83 bits

Research on JELLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with JELLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.92 guesses and ranks #14,136 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 JELLS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.91, at or below the proven-optimal 3.92, 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

One syllable Say it JEHLZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, JELLS is a kind of change.

Synonyms set

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
JELLS 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.

In a sentence

Boil the syrup until it jells.
© tatoeba.org contributor PublicDomainRecipes (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).