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

MACHS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of Mach

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 MACHS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MACHS 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 74.7% of games, misses completely in 25.3%, and leaves about 241 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,662 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 MACHS 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.

4.33 Entropy (bits)
241 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 41% of evaluated openers
1.61 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MACHS 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#5,662 Rank among openers
Opening with MACHS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,662 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
861
4 guesses
1,228
5 guesses
195
6 guesses
13
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
1 vowels
Common:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
20%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

MACHS can come back 84 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

600 answers
285 answers
236 answers
139 answers
113 answers
88 answers
84 answers
66 answers
64 answers
58 answers
50 answers
49 answers
38 answers
36 answers
35 answers
32 answers
30 answers
26 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1C3H4S1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing MACHS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MACHS:

25% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
12% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
10% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.3%
RIONE 6.04 bits
12.0%
ALERT 5.55 bits
9.9%
ROUET 5.54 bits
5.9%
TRINE 4.73 bits
4.8%
CRINE 5.27 bits
3.7%
STIRE 4.93 bits
3.5%
RONTE 5.49 bits
2.8%
ROULE 4.94 bits
2.7%
RIONE 4.36 bits
2.4%
SOREL 4.67 bits

Research on MACHS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MACHS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,867 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,368 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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 MAKS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MACHS 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).