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

OLEUM

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /oʊliəm/

Noun

A solution of sulfur trioxide in sulfuric acid.

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

Etymology

From German Oleum, from Latin oleum (“olive oil”), from Ancient Greek ἔλαιον (élaion, “olive oil”). Doublet of oil.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use OLEUM in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.2% 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 OLEUM performs as a guess

Wordle accepts OLEUM 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 85.9% of games, misses completely in 14.1%, and leaves about 163 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,678 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 OLEUM 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.

4.69 Entropy (bits)
163 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How OLEUM 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#7,678 Rank among openers
Opening with OLEUM left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,678 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
67
3 guesses
812
4 guesses
1,222
5 guesses
227
6 guesses
24

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
ELOU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
21%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

OLEUM can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

355 answers
335 answers
233 answers
124 answers
121 answers
116 answers
107 answers
107 answers
67 answers
67 answers
54 answers
50 answers
49 answers
43 answers
39 answers
39 answers
31 answers
29 answers
29 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1L1E1U1M3
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing OLEUM

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing OLEUM:

15% chance
Suggested:
REATE
14% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
10% chance
Suggested:
THORN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.9% →
REATE 5.56 bits
14.1% →
SAINT 5.91 bits
9.8% →
THORN 5.19 bits
5.2% →
LEARE 4.78 bits
5.1% →
SNARY 4.82 bits
4.9% →
DORSE 4.45 bits
4.5% →
SHART 5.09 bits
4.5% →
STALL 4.93 bits
2.8% →
TARSE 4.62 bits
2.8% →
LOYAL 4.20 bits

Research on OLEUM

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

Optimal play

Opening with OLEUM, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,263 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,925 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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
OLEUM 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).