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

PETRI

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpiːtɹi//ˈpɛtɹi/

Noun

Ellipsis of petri dish.

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 PETRI performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PETRI 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 86.6% of games, misses completely in 13.4%, and leaves about 117 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,331 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 PETRI 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.

5.15 Entropy (bits)
117 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 90% of evaluated openers
0.79 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PETRI 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,331 Rank among openers
Opening with PETRI left 1 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,331 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
70
3 guesses
961
4 guesses
1,119
5 guesses
186
6 guesses
17
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIRT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
26%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

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

319 answers
210 answers
163 answers
145 answers
141 answers
119 answers
88 answers
82 answers
81 answers
76 answers
56 answers
53 answers
49 answers
48 answers
46 answers
43 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3E1T1R1I1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing PETRI

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PETRI:

13% chance
Suggested:
SALON
9% chance
Suggested:
ALOSE
7% chance
Suggested:
SONLY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.4%
SALON 5.73 bits
8.8%
ALOSE 5.36 bits
6.9%
SONLY 5.06 bits
6.1%
SOLAR 4.27 bits
5.9%
ARSON 4.91 bits
5.0%
SAUNT 5.26 bits
3.7%
SLANT 5.05 bits
3.5%
SAINT 4.46 bits
3.4%
ANILE 4.48 bits
3.2%
SCALE 4.55 bits

Research on PETRI

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

Optimal play

Opening with PETRI, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,254 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 #692 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PETRI sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

My house is not a Petri dish!
© tatoeba.org contributor Eccles17 (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Tom grew up inside a Petri dish.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).