PSALM
Yes, PSALM was the Wordle answer on February 17, 2024 (Wordle #973).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /sɑːm//sɑm//sɑlm/
- Noun
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A sacred song; a poetical composition for use in the praise or worship of God.
- Noun
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One of the hymns by David and others, collected into one book of the Old Testament, or a modern metrical version of such a hymn for public worship.
- Verb
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To extol in psalms; to make music; to sing
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English salm or psalme, from Old English psealm, later reinforced from Old French psalme (modern French psaume), both from Latin psalmus, from Ancient Greek ψαλμός (psalmós, “the sound emanating from twitching or twanging perhaps with the hands or fingers, mostly of musical strings”) (from ψάλλω (psállō, “to make a sound by striking, touching, plucking, rubbing, twanging, or vibrating”)), but later in New Testament times the meaning of ψαλμός (psalmós) evolved from its Classical mean…
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SAHLM.
Use PSALM in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 91.5% 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
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: February 17, 2024 (#973).
See the full page for that puzzle: February 17, 2024 (#973).
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 →PSALM in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #967
Reveal this appearance's category
PSALM appeared in TREES PLUS A LETTER (purple group).
How PSALM performs as a guess
PSALM is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 77.5% of games, misses completely in 22.5%, and leaves about 203 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,494 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 PSALM 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 PSALM 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
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches PSALM in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
PSALM can come back 95 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 PSALM; 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 PSALM
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PSALM.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PSALM:
Research on PSALM
Game-tree analysis and word research for PSALM, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PSALM, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,626 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.77 guesses at best and is rank #711 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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
- PSALM sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).