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

NITRO

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈnaɪtɹəʊ/

Noun

The univalent NO₂ functional group.

Noun

Nitroglycerin, especially as medication.

Adjective

Containing the nitro group.

“Nitro compounds tend to be unstable and often explosive.”

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

Etymology

Derived from nitrocellulose, referring to local gunpowder manufacture.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it NIHTROH.

Rhymes with VITRO

In a sentence

Buy me Discord Nitro or we're breaking up.
© tatoeba.org contributor DJ_Saidez (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use NITRO in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.8% 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 NITRO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NITRO 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 85.4% of games, misses completely in 14.6%, and leaves about 124 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,199 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 NITRO 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.

5.09 Entropy (bits)
124 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NITRO 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,199 Rank among openers
Opening with NITRO left 2 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 3.60 average. It ranks #1,199 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
1,007
4 guesses
1,098
5 guesses
163
6 guesses
20

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
INORT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
22%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

NITRO can come back 107 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

347 answers
213 answers
165 answers
142 answers
122 answers
115 answers
114 answers
69 answers
65 answers
64 answers
63 answers
61 answers
53 answers
53 answers
51 answers
40 answers
35 answers
31 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1I1T1R1O1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing NITRO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NITRO:

15% chance
Suggested:
SPALE
9% chance
Suggested:
CAESE
7% chance
Suggested:
CLOSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.6% →
SPALE 6.18 bits
8.9% →
CAESE 5.29 bits
6.9% →
CLOSE 5.11 bits
6.0% →
SHALE 5.62 bits
5.1% →
LANCE 5.09 bits
4.8% →
SCALE 5.42 bits
4.8% →
SOOLE 4.17 bits
2.9% →
SOWLE 4.17 bits
2.7% →
SHULE 4.53 bits
2.7% →
SLANE 4.42 bits

Research on NITRO

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

Optimal play

Opening with NITRO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,614 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.77 guesses at best and is rank #605 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, 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
NITRO sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).