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

SEROW

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /səˈɹoʊ//ˈsɛɹəʊ/

Noun

Any of several species of Asian ungulates of the genus Capricornis.

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 SEROW performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SEROW 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 85.5% of games, misses completely in 14.5%, and leaves about 131 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,994 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 SEROW 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.

5.02 Entropy (bits)
131 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 84% of evaluated openers
0.93 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SEROW 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#5,994 Rank among openers
Opening with SEROW left 1 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 3.69 average. It ranks #5,994 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
67
3 guesses
882
4 guesses
1,153
5 guesses
226
6 guesses
25
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
2 vowels
Common:
EORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
34%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

SEROW can come back 103 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

344 answers
237 answers
179 answers
169 answers
124 answers
115 answers
100 answers
75 answers
68 answers
67 answers
64 answers
54 answers
44 answers
39 answers
39 answers
38 answers
36 answers
28 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1E1R1O1W4
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing SEROW

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SEROW:

14% chance
Suggested:
PAINT
10% chance
Suggested:
ALINE
8% chance
Suggested:
AINEE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.5%
PAINT 5.73 bits
10.0%
ALINE 5.48 bits
7.5%
AINEE 4.44 bits
7.1%
TONAL 5.04 bits
5.2%
TRAIN 5.17 bits
4.8%
SLANT 4.74 bits
4.2%
BLATE 4.62 bits
3.2%
PLATE 4.79 bits
2.9%
SAIST 4.48 bits
2.8%
CLONE 4.37 bits

Research on SEROW

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

Optimal play

Opening with SEROW, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,349 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 SEROW can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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

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

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SEROW 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).