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

PRISS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /pɹɪs/

Noun

A prissy person

Verb

To dress or behave in a prissy manner

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

Etymology

Back-formation from prissy (analyzed as priss + -y (“(manner)”)); noun attested 1923.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use PRISS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.4% 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 PRISS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PRISS 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 74.3% of games, misses completely in 25.7%, and leaves about 253 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,338 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 PRISS 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.

4.22 Entropy (bits)
253 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PRISS 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,338 Rank among openers
Opening with PRISS left 4 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 3.73 average. It ranks #8,338 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
840
4 guesses
1,192
5 guesses
249
6 guesses
22

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
IRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
30%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

PRISS can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

612 answers
315 answers
190 answers
182 answers
133 answers
110 answers
75 answers
73 answers
54 answers
52 answers
49 answers
46 answers
40 answers
37 answers
35 answers
24 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3R1I1S1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing PRISS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PRISS:

26% chance
Suggested:
ALONE
13% chance
Suggested:
TERRA
8% chance
Suggested:
TILDE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.7% →
ALONE 6.00 bits
13.2% →
TERRA 5.38 bits
8.0% →
TILDE 5.14 bits
7.6% →
LEANT 5.48 bits
5.6% →
COATE 5.00 bits
4.6% →
CLONE 4.91 bits
3.1% →
CADET 4.52 bits
3.1% →
CARET 4.60 bits
2.3% →
AHOLE 4.75 bits
2.2% →
HAOLE 5.00 bits

Research on PRISS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PRISS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,538 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.91 guesses at best and is rank #4,514 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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
PRISS 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).