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

MELLS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of mell

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 MELLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MELLS 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 236 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,205 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 MELLS 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.

4.24 Entropy (bits)
236 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 35% of evaluated openers
1.71 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MELLS 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#10,205 Rank among openers
Opening with MELLS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,205 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
758
4 guesses
1,266
5 guesses
263
6 guesses
19
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
1 vowels
Common:
ELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
25%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

MELLS can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

520 answers
379 answers
229 answers
162 answers
153 answers
123 answers
104 answers
64 answers
50 answers
40 answers
39 answers
38 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
24 answers
24 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3E1L1L1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing MELLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MELLS:

22% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
16% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
10% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.9%
TRAIN 6.09 bits
16.0%
ORATE 5.25 bits
9.6%
SAINT 5.34 bits
6.8%
STAIR 4.85 bits
6.4%
FINAL 4.99 bits
5.2%
REATE 4.51 bits
4.4%
ARENE 4.52 bits
2.7%
PRIMO 4.53 bits
2.1%
ROANY 4.43 bits
1.7%
RANEE 4.43 bits

Research on MELLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MELLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,478 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 MELLS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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 MEHLZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MELLS 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).