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

PHLOX

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PHLOX Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /flɒks//flɑks/

Noun

Any flowering plant of the genus Phlox.

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 PHLOX performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PHLOX 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 67.7% of games, misses completely in 32.3%, and leaves about 352 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,420 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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.

P___X P in the 1st position and X in the 5th position P__O_ P in the 1st position and O in the 4th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe PHLOX 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.

3.74 Entropy (bits)
352 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 13% of evaluated openers
2.21 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PHLOX 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,420 Rank among openers
Opening with PHLOX solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,420 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
756
4 guesses
1,234
5 guesses
304
6 guesses
22
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
1 vowels
Common:
LO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
22%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

PHLOX can come back 64 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

767 answers
311 answers
296 answers
120 answers
104 answers
96 answers
87 answers
73 answers
63 answers
62 answers
45 answers
32 answers
28 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
19 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3H4L1O1X8
Total: 17 points

Words With Friends

Total: 18 points

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

Try next

TIARE RAISE RONTE CARTE STARE COATE

Strategy after playing PHLOX

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PHLOX:

32% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
13% chance
Suggested:
RAISE
12% chance
Suggested:
RONTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

32.3% →
TIARE 6.24 bits
13.1% →
RAISE 5.32 bits
12.5% →
RONTE 5.39 bits
5.1% →
CARTE 5.41 bits
4.4% →
STARE 5.62 bits
4.0% →
COATE 4.26 bits
3.7% →
TRICE 5.30 bits
3.1% →
SANER 4.70 bits
2.7% →
SABLE 4.69 bits
2.6% →
IRATE 4.81 bits

Research on PHLOX

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

Optimal play

Opening with PHLOX, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,329 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.93 guesses at best and is rank #4,859 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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 FLAHKS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, PHLOX is a kind of herb.

Familiarity and learning

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

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).