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

MELES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of mele

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 MELES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MELES 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 78.1% of games, misses completely in 21.9%, and leaves about 199 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,108 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 MELES 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.

4.55 Entropy (bits)
199 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 55% of evaluated openers
1.40 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MELES 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#8,108 Rank among openers
Opening with MELES solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #8,108 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
816
4 guesses
1,243
5 guesses
227
6 guesses
18
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:
ELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
31%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

MELES can come back 82 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

520 answers
229 answers
209 answers
206 answers
126 answers
112 answers
84 answers
82 answers
64 answers
60 answers
50 answers
47 answers
42 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3E1L1E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MELES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MELES:

22% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
10% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
9% chance
Suggested:
ORATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.9%
TRAIN 6.09 bits
9.6%
SAINT 5.34 bits
8.8%
ORATE 5.15 bits
8.7%
CAROL 4.84 bits
5.3%
RAINY 4.26 bits
4.7%
STAIR 4.70 bits
3.5%
RAINY 4.49 bits
3.5%
BLATE 4.49 bits
2.7%
PRIMO 4.53 bits
2.5%
SHALL 4.26 bits

Research on MELES

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

Optimal play

Opening with MELES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,817 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 MELES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, 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 MEELZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MELES 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.

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).