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

MACER

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A mace bearer; specifically, an officer of a court in Scotland.

Noun

A cardsharp.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

From Middle English macer, from Anglo-Norman macer, from mace (“mace”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Related meanings

Synonyms mace

Use MACER in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.1% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How MACER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MACER 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 117 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,743 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 MACER 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.

5.20 Entropy (bits)
117 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MACER 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#2,743 Rank among openers
Opening with MACER 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,743 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
80
3 guesses
941
4 guesses
1,108
5 guesses
209
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AER

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
31%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

MACER can come back 120 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

321 answers
219 answers
151 answers
144 answers
115 answers
106 answers
96 answers
94 answers
91 answers
83 answers
81 answers
57 answers
49 answers
42 answers
36 answers
33 answers
33 answers
29 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1C3E1R1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing MACER

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MACER:

13% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
9% chance
Suggested:
SEINE
6% chance
Suggested:
DROIT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.5% →
SOILY 5.64 bits
9.2% →
SEINE 5.46 bits
6.3% →
DROIT 5.04 bits
6.0% →
SLANT 5.41 bits
4.8% →
SLATE 5.02 bits
4.4% →
TOISE 4.61 bits
4.0% →
SONLY 4.61 bits
3.9% →
COUNT 4.89 bits
3.8% →
SOILY 3.58 bits
3.5% →
GRANT 4.26 bits

Research on MACER

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

Optimal play

Opening with MACER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #995 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 MACER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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.

Familiarity and learning

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