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

PICRA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpaɪkɹə/

Noun

The powder of aloes with canella, formerly officinal, employed as a cathartic.

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

Etymology

From Medieval Latin picra, from Ancient Greek πίκρα (píkra, “a kind of antidote”), from πικρός (pikrós, “sharp, bitter”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use PICRA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.6% 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 PICRA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PICRA 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 85.1% of games, misses completely in 14.9%, and leaves about 153 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,763 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 PICRA 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.

4.87 Entropy (bits)
153 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PICRA 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
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#2,763 Rank among openers
Opening with PICRA 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,763 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
74
3 guesses
945
4 guesses
1,121
5 guesses
194
6 guesses
18

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
24%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

PICRA can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

356 answers
316 answers
216 answers
149 answers
140 answers
96 answers
84 answers
73 answers
59 answers
59 answers
55 answers
46 answers
45 answers
44 answers
41 answers
40 answers
37 answers
28 answers
28 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
21 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3I1C3R1A1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing PICRA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PICRA:

15% chance
Suggested:
STOLE
13% chance
Suggested:
STOLE
9% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.9% →
STOLE 5.96 bits
13.3% →
STOLE 5.53 bits
9.1% →
ROUET 5.28 bits
6.2% →
STILE 5.29 bits
5.9% →
TALER 4.50 bits
4.0% →
SONLY 4.26 bits
3.5% →
CLONE 5.16 bits
3.1% →
SLATE 4.86 bits
2.5% →
ALIEN 4.54 bits
2.5% →
SNIDE 4.24 bits

Research on PICRA

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

Optimal play

Opening with PICRA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,899 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #777 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 3.67, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT).