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

SEMES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /siːmz/

Noun

plural of seme

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of seme

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 SEMES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SEMES 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 67.4% of games, misses completely in 32.6%, and leaves about 342 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,925 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.90 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 SEMES 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.

3.81 Entropy (bits)
342 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 15% of evaluated openers
2.14 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SEMES 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.

3.90 Avg guesses
99.75% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,925 Rank among openers
Opening with SEMES left 6 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.90 average. It ranks #13,925 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
624
4 guesses
1,281
5 guesses
376
6 guesses
34
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

3/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
67%
Green tile
40%
All gray
33%

Feedback distribution

SEMES can come back 60 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

773 answers
299 answers
194 answers
178 answers
123 answers
108 answers
94 answers
84 answers
52 answers
40 answers
37 answers
37 answers
34 answers
25 answers
22 answers
21 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1E1M3E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing SEMES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SEMES:

33% chance
Suggested:
TONAL
13% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
8% chance
Suggested:
RAINY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

32.6%
TONAL 5.85 bits
12.6%
RAILE 5.03 bits
8.2%
RAINY 4.66 bits
7.5%
RAINY 4.34 bits
5.2%
CLARY 4.92 bits
4.5%
MACRO 4.98 bits
4.0%
TRASH 4.89 bits
3.5%
PARTE 4.44 bits
2.2%
ROUTE 4.05 bits
1.7%
COALY 3.88 bits

Research on SEMES

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

Optimal play

Opening with SEMES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,190 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with SEMES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.90; proven optimal play reaches 3.87. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it SEHMEEZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SEMES 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).