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

METES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with METES Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /miːts/

Noun

plural of mete

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of mete

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 METES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts METES 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 77.8% of games, misses completely in 22.2%, and leaves about 198 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,241 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

M___S M in the 1st position and S in the 5th position M__E_ M in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _E__S E in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position ME_ES M in the 1st position, E in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in METES.

First-turn measures

All four describe METES 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.

4.54 Entropy (bits)
198 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.7% 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 METES 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#8,241 Rank among openers
Opening with METES left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,241 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
785
4 guesses
1,276
5 guesses
213
6 guesses
20
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:
EST

Feedback chances

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

Feedback distribution

METES can come back 87 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

526 answers
213 answers
195 answers
189 answers
141 answers
111 answers
97 answers
84 answers
74 answers
74 answers
52 answers
50 answers
42 answers
33 answers
29 answers
26 answers
26 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3E1T1E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

CAROL RAILE TAROT SLAIN RAINY STAIR

Strategy after playing METES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing METES:

22% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
9% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
8% chance
Suggested:
TAROT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.2% →
CAROL 5.92 bits
9.0% →
RAILE 4.99 bits
8.2% →
TAROT 5.13 bits
8.0% →
SLAIN 4.98 bits
5.9% →
RAINY 4.40 bits
4.7% →
STAIR 4.39 bits
4.1% →
SPARE 4.55 bits
3.5% →
CLARY 5.00 bits
3.1% →
TRACE 4.77 bits
3.1% →
LOAMY 4.70 bits

Research on METES

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

Optimal play

Opening with METES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,404 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 METES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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 MEETS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, METES is a kind of bound.

Synonyms border borderline

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
METES 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).