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

SCRAT

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /skɹæt/

Verb

To scratch; to use one's nails or claws.

Verb

To rake; to search.

Noun

A hermaphrodite.

Noun

A devil.

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

Etymology

Compare Old English scritta (“a hermaphrodite”), which had an earlier sense of "effeminate person, castrated man," presumably related to sċieran (“to cut”). Liberman notes that Germanic glossators, not familiar with Ovid, did not know exactly how to translate Latin hermaphroditus and instead matched it with more native words related to sexual deficiencies.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use SCRAT in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.3% 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 SCRAT performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SCRAT 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 86.0% of games, misses completely in 14.0%, and leaves about 113 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #153 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.56 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 SCRAT 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.

5.33 Entropy (bits)
113 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SCRAT 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.

3.56 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#153 Rank among openers
Opening with SCRAT left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.56 average. It ranks #153 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
62
3 guesses
1,064
4 guesses
1,085
5 guesses
125
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ARST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
36%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

SCRAT can come back 117 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

333 answers
202 answers
190 answers
118 answers
112 answers
100 answers
95 answers
60 answers
53 answers
52 answers
51 answers
50 answers
48 answers
44 answers
43 answers
38 answers
38 answers
36 answers
35 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1C3R1A1T1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing SCRAT

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SCRAT:

14% chance
Suggested:
MOILE
8% chance
Suggested:
DRIER
8% chance
Suggested:
ALANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.0% →
MOILE 5.92 bits
8.5% →
DRIER 5.09 bits
8.0% →
ALANE 5.39 bits
4.9% →
BEARD 4.48 bits
4.7% →
CLINE 5.30 bits
4.2% →
ALINE 4.81 bits
4.0% →
TITHE 5.13 bits
2.5% →
HOISE 4.77 bits
2.2% →
TOILE 4.27 bits
2.2% →
CLONE 4.43 bits

Research on SCRAT

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

Optimal play

Opening with SCRAT, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #326 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.71 guesses at best and is rank #49 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.56, at or below the proven-optimal 3.61, 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
SCRAT 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).