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

PRIMS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PRIMS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of prim

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 PRIMS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PRIMS 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 78.6% of games, misses completely in 21.4%, and leaves about 198 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,612 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

P___S P in the 1st position and S in the 5th position P__M_ P in the 1st position and M in the 4th position _R__S R in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe PRIMS 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.

4.59 Entropy (bits)
198 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 57% of evaluated openers
1.36 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PRIMS 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
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#2,612 Rank among openers
Opening with PRIMS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,612 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
942
4 guesses
1,160
5 guesses
175
6 guesses
12
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:
IRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
28%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

PRIMS can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

509 answers
267 answers
232 answers
155 answers
123 answers
103 answers
79 answers
78 answers
66 answers
45 answers
45 answers
44 answers
44 answers
37 answers
37 answers
33 answers
32 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3R1I1M3S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

OLATE TERRA STALE TILDE COATE CLONE

Strategy after playing PRIMS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PRIMS:

21% chance
Suggested:
OLATE
11% chance
Suggested:
TERRA
10% chance
Suggested:
STALE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.4% →
OLATE 6.00 bits
11.2% →
TERRA 5.39 bits
9.8% →
STALE 5.75 bits
6.5% →
TILDE 5.16 bits
5.2% →
COATE 5.01 bits
4.3% →
CLONE 4.89 bits
3.3% →
STOAE 4.89 bits
3.3% →
MOTEL 5.12 bits
2.8% →
CADET 4.58 bits
1.9% →
LEANT 4.27 bits

Research on PRIMS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PRIMS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #3,144 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 #824 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.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it PRIHMZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, PRIMS is a kind of change or press.

Synonyms victorian proper refined

Opposites improper

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PRIMS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.8 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).