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

SERVO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈsɜː.vəʊ//ˈsɝ.voʊ/

Noun

A servomechanism.

Verb

To control by means of servocontrol

Noun

A service station, being a place to buy petrol for cars etc., as well as various convenience items, with or without actual car service facilities.

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 SERVO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SERVO 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 85.3% of games, misses completely in 14.7%, and leaves about 138 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,951 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 SERVO 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.

4.88 Entropy (bits)
138 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 77% of evaluated openers
1.06 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SERVO 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#7,951 Rank among openers
Opening with SERVO 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 3.72 average. It ranks #7,951 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
830
4 guesses
1,187
5 guesses
245
6 guesses
27
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)
85%
Green tile
33%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

SERVO can come back 96 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

348 answers
239 answers
183 answers
175 answers
137 answers
125 answers
98 answers
98 answers
76 answers
72 answers
62 answers
54 answers
48 answers
41 answers
40 answers
37 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1E1R1V4O1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SERVO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SERVO:

15% chance
Suggested:
PAINT
10% chance
Suggested:
ANILE
8% chance
Suggested:
TONAL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.7%
PAINT 5.70 bits
10.1%
ANILE 5.56 bits
7.7%
TONAL 4.97 bits
7.4%
IRATE 4.40 bits
5.8%
TRAIN 5.20 bits
5.3%
SLANT 4.70 bits
4.1%
DROOL 4.03 bits
4.1%
BLATE 4.51 bits
3.2%
PLATE 4.70 bits
3.0%
SAIST 4.50 bits

Research on SERVO

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

Optimal play

Opening with SERVO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,835 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 SERVO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72; proven optimal play reaches 3.71. 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 SURVOH.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SERVO is a kind of system.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SERVO sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

Is this a servo or a disturbance-rejection problem?
© tatoeba.org contributor FeuDRenais2 (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).