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

NACRE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈneɪkə//ˈneɪkəɹ/

Noun

A pearly substance made mainly of stacked layers of aragonite and organic matter which lines the interior of many shells; mother-of-pearl.

Noun

A shellfish which contains mother-of-pearl.

Alternative forms: naker, nacker, nakir, nackir

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Middle French nacre, from Medieval Latin nacchara, ultimately derived from Arabic نَقَّارَة (naqqāra). Doublet of nagara, nagada, and naqareh. Also present in nacarat.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use NACRE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.3% 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 NACRE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NACRE 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 88.5% of games, misses completely in 11.5%, and leaves about 88 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #560 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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 NACRE 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.

5.51 Entropy (bits)
88 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NACRE 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#560 Rank among openers
Opening with NACRE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.59 average. It ranks #560 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
97
3 guesses
982
4 guesses
1,086
5 guesses
172
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AENR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
37%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

NACRE can come back 124 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

274 answers
135 answers
130 answers
118 answers
112 answers
106 answers
106 answers
74 answers
73 answers
67 answers
61 answers
60 answers
57 answers
56 answers
50 answers
36 answers
35 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
31 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1A1C3R1E1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing NACRE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NACRE:

11% chance
Suggested:
MOULT
6% chance
Suggested:
SOLED
5% chance
Suggested:
SLEET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.5% →
MOULT 5.58 bits
5.7% →
SOLED 3.92 bits
5.5% →
SLEET 5.34 bits
4.9% →
PLAIT 5.10 bits
4.7% →
GROUT 5.04 bits
4.4% →
SOILY 4.81 bits
4.4% →
SOILY 4.86 bits
3.1% →
TOUCH 4.83 bits
3.1% →
SALTY 4.38 bits
2.8% →
OLDEN 4.18 bits

Research on NACRE

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

Optimal play

Opening with NACRE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #276 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 NACRE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.61, 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
NACRE 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).