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

MELTS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of melt

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of melt

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it MEHLTS.

Rhymes with BELTS CELTS PELTS FELTS

Related meanings

Synonyms run disappear fade melting dissolve mellow

In a sentence

Ice melts in the sun.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The sun melts the snow.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use MELTS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.5% 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 MELTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MELTS 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 86.3% of games, misses completely in 13.7%, and leaves about 132 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,455 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 MELTS 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.

4.98 Entropy (bits)
132 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MELTS 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#1,455 Rank among openers
Opening with MELTS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.61 average. It ranks #1,455 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
76
3 guesses
945
4 guesses
1,171
5 guesses
147
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ELST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
25%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

MELTS can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

327 answers
270 answers
161 answers
147 answers
129 answers
116 answers
115 answers
87 answers
86 answers
86 answers
53 answers
49 answers
48 answers
41 answers
40 answers
39 answers
36 answers
32 answers
31 answers
28 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3E1L1T1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MELTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MELTS:

14% chance
Suggested:
ROANY
11% chance
Suggested:
IRADE
7% chance
Suggested:
CAROL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.7% →
ROANY 5.83 bits
11.3% →
IRADE 5.13 bits
6.8% →
CAROL 4.92 bits
6.2% →
TRAIN 5.40 bits
5.4% →
RAINY 4.94 bits
4.9% →
AINEE 4.63 bits
4.8% →
PAIRE 4.91 bits
3.6% →
TREAT 4.64 bits
3.6% →
ROAST 4.60 bits
3.6% →
RANCE 4.73 bits

Research on MELTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MELTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,925 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.74 guesses at best and is rank #247 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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
MELTS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).