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

SERAC

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /sɛˈɹæk//ˈsɛɹæk/

Noun

Often sérac: a hard, cone-shaped, pale green, strongly flavoured cheese from Switzerland made from skimmed cow milk and blue fenugreek (Trigonella caerulea); Schabziger, Sapsago. It is usually eaten grated, mixed with butter, or in a fondue.

Noun

A sharp tower of ice formed by intersecting crevasses of a glacier.

Alternative forms: sérac

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

Etymology

From Swiss French sérac (“kind of cheese; sharp tower of ice”), from Franco-Provençal sera, seré, from Latin seraceum, from serum (“whey”), from Proto-Indo-European *ser- (“to flow, run”). Sense 2 is from the resemblance of the towers of ice to the cheese, which tends to cleave into rectangular pieces.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use SERAC in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.3% 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 SERAC performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SERAC 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 89.7% of games, misses completely in 10.3%, and leaves about 88 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #685 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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 SERAC 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.

5.55 Entropy (bits)
88 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SERAC 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#685 Rank among openers
Opening with SERAC left 2 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 3.59 average. It ranks #685 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
79
3 guesses
1,015
4 guesses
1,063
5 guesses
181
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AERS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
90%
Green tile
36%
All gray
10%

Feedback distribution

SERAC can come back 119 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

246 answers
169 answers
157 answers
138 answers
106 answers
99 answers
93 answers
84 answers
78 answers
66 answers
57 answers
56 answers
50 answers
48 answers
47 answers
40 answers
34 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
27 answers
26 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1E1R1A1C3
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing SERAC

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SERAC:

10% chance
Suggested:
MOULT
7% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
7% chance
Suggested:
TALON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.3% →
MOULT 5.43 bits
7.1% →
TOILE 5.49 bits
6.6% →
TALON 5.09 bits
5.8% →
TOILE 4.31 bits
4.4% →
DROIT 4.95 bits
4.2% →
TABLE 4.55 bits
3.9% →
SPILT 4.45 bits
3.5% →
TRAIN 4.20 bits
3.3% →
CLUNK 4.93 bits
2.8% →
TOILE 4.31 bits

Research on SERAC

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

Optimal play

Opening with SERAC, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #665 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.75 guesses at best and is rank #286 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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
SERAC 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).