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

SKIVE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈskaɪv/

Verb

To avoid one's lessons or work (chiefly at school or university); shirk.

Noun

Something very easy, where one can slack off without penalty.

“Mr Smith's history classes are a total skive.”

Noun

An act of avoiding lessons or work.

Verb

To pare or shave off the rough or thick parts of.

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

Etymology

Probably from French esquiver (“slink away”), from Middle French esquiver (“to escape”), from Spanish esquivar (“to avoid, reject, elude”), from esquivo (“contemptuous, loathsome”), itself from Old French eschiver, of East Germanic origin, from Gothic *𐍃𐌺𐌹𐌿𐌷𐍃 (*skiuhs, “afraid, barefaced”), from Proto-Germanic *skeuhaz (“afraid, frightened”). Cognate with English shy, eschew.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

In a sentence

I often skive off school.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)
You often skive off school.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use SKIVE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.9% 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 SKIVE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SKIVE 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 78.4% of games, misses completely in 21.6%, and leaves about 216 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,224 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 SKIVE 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.

4.37 Entropy (bits)
216 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SKIVE 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#11,224 Rank among openers
Opening with SKIVE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,224 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
48
3 guesses
709
4 guesses
1,300
5 guesses
280
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
38%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

SKIVE can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

516 answers
351 answers
187 answers
166 answers
133 answers
98 answers
89 answers
65 answers
65 answers
52 answers
52 answers
44 answers
41 answers
40 answers
34 answers
34 answers
33 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1K5I1V4E1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing SKIVE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SKIVE:

22% chance
Suggested:
TALON
15% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
8% chance
Suggested:
ANTIC

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.6% →
TALON 5.74 bits
14.7% →
ALTER 5.42 bits
7.8% →
ANTIC 5.07 bits
7.0% →
GRACE 4.49 bits
5.6% →
ROAST 4.61 bits
4.1% →
TRASH 4.99 bits
3.7% →
SLANT 4.27 bits
2.7% →
DINER 4.48 bits
2.7% →
CLARY 5.08 bits
2.2% →
ROAST 3.84 bits

Research on SKIVE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SKIVE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,294 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,182 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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
SKIVE 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).