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

MELIC

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈmɛlɪk/

Adjective

Of or pertaining to Greek lyric verse.

Noun

Any of various grasses, of the genus Melica, from northern temperate regions.

Alternative forms: melick

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 MELIC performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MELIC 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 84.0% of games, misses completely in 16.0%, and leaves about 158 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,582 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 MELIC 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.

4.78 Entropy (bits)
158 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 70% of evaluated openers
1.17 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MELIC 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#2,582 Rank among openers
Opening with MELIC 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,582 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
72
3 guesses
918
4 guesses
1,186
5 guesses
163
6 guesses
14
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:
EIL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
24%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

MELIC can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

380 answers
327 answers
156 answers
138 answers
117 answers
116 answers
111 answers
107 answers
79 answers
52 answers
51 answers
49 answers
46 answers
41 answers
35 answers
35 answers
35 answers
34 answers
32 answers
27 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3E1L1I1C3
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing MELIC

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MELIC:

16% chance
Suggested:
SNORT
14% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
7% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.0%
SNORT 6.02 bits
13.8%
ROAST 5.58 bits
6.6%
SAINT 5.21 bits
5.8%
ROAST 5.15 bits
4.9%
SAREE 4.46 bits
4.9%
COURT 5.37 bits
4.7%
RINSE 4.81 bits
4.5%
REATE 4.69 bits
3.3%
CRATE 5.03 bits
2.2%
ROAST 4.96 bits

Research on MELIC

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

Optimal play

Opening with MELIC, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #3,826 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #957 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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 MEHLIHK. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MELIC 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).