PREYS
PREYS is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /pɹeɪz//pɹɛjz//pɹæɪz/
- Verb
-
third-person singular simple present indicative of prey
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
How it sounds
One syllable Say it PRAYZ.
Rhymes with PLAYS RAISE PHASE STAYS BLAZE
Related meanings
Synonyms target feed RAVEN quarry
In a sentence
That monster preys on kids only.
He preys on vulnerable women.
Use PREYS 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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How PREYS performs as a guess
Wordle accepts PREYS 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 85.3% of games, misses completely in 14.7%, and leaves about 153 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,182 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe PREYS 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How PREYS 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Feedback distribution
PREYS can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for PREYS; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing PREYS
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PREYS.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PREYS:
Research on PREYS
Game-tree analysis and word research for PREYS, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PREYS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,310 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 #2,806 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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
- PREYS 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.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.0 of 5).
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).