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

KEROS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of kero

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 KEROS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KEROS 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 86.5% of games, misses completely in 13.5%, and leaves about 132 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,303 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 KEROS 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.

4.87 Entropy (bits)
132 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 76% of evaluated openers
1.07 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KEROS 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#7,303 Rank among openers
Opening with KEROS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,303 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
857
4 guesses
1,189
5 guesses
222
6 guesses
29
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:
EORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
23%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

KEROS can come back 87 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

320 answers
238 answers
177 answers
173 answers
152 answers
122 answers
108 answers
105 answers
71 answers
69 answers
58 answers
50 answers
46 answers
42 answers
40 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
29 answers
25 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5E1R1O1S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing KEROS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KEROS:

13% chance
Suggested:
PAINT
10% chance
Suggested:
ALINE
7% chance
Suggested:
AINEE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.5%
PAINT 5.73 bits
10.0%
ALINE 5.45 bits
7.5%
AINEE 4.46 bits
7.3%
TONAL 4.92 bits
6.4%
SAULT 5.34 bits
5.1%
TRIAD 5.23 bits
4.5%
SLANT 4.81 bits
4.4%
THALE 4.61 bits
3.0%
ADORN 4.35 bits
2.9%
CLONE 4.32 bits

Research on KEROS

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

Optimal play

Opening with KEROS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,426 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 KEROS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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 KEHROHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
KEROS 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).