5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

PSALM

Yes, PSALM was the Wordle answer on February 17, 2024 (Wordle #973).

As an opener, it rules out about 91.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PSALM Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /sɑːm//sɑm//sɑlm/

Noun

A sacred song; a poetical composition for use in the praise or worship of God.

Noun

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

To extol in psalms; to make music; to sing

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past 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.

Wordle Observatory · optional

Played this Wordle?

Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds

Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.

See the public data

The Observatory retains the selected puzzle, result, rating, optional Hard Mode answer and a random one-puzzle receipt. It stores no answer word, grid, guesses, account, email, IP-derived ID or reusable player identifier.

How verification and withdrawal work

The answer word and timezone are used transiently to verify this page, then discarded. The receipt prevents duplicate submissions and lets this browser withdraw later; anyone with that token can withdraw, so keep browser-data exports private. Read the full privacy details.

How PSALM performs as a guess

PSALM is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 77.4% of games, misses completely in 22.6%, 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.

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___M P in the 1st position and M in the 5th position P__L_ P in the 1st position and L in the 4th position

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

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.

4.57 Entropy (bits)
203 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
91.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 57% of evaluated openers
1.38 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

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.

3.64 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.66 Spread of game lengths
#3,494 Rank among openers
Opening with PSALM solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.66 means those games clustered within about 0.66 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #3,494 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
919
4 guesses
1,209
5 guesses
164
6 guesses
11
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:
ALS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
27%
All gray
23%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I C K
P S A L M

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches PSALM in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

PSALM can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

536 answers
231 answers
229 answers
161 answers
113 answers
106 answers
85 answers
77 answers
62 answers
59 answers
56 answers
55 answers
47 answers
40 answers
37 answers
36 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3S1A1L1M3
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Try next

TRONE TONER ROUET GOIER DRICE MOIRE

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:

23% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
10% chance
Suggested:
TONER
10% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.6% →
TRONE 6.14 bits
9.7% →
TONER 5.49 bits
9.6% →
ROUET 5.70 bits
6.8% →
GOIER 5.00 bits
4.8% →
TONER 4.65 bits
4.5% →
DRICE 5.05 bits
3.6% →
MOIRE 5.23 bits
3.2% →
DRICE 4.42 bits
2.6% →
CRUET 4.32 bits
2.5% →
RIONE 4.96 bits

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.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it SAHLM.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, PSALM is a kind of writing or sing.

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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).