SLATE
Yes, SLATE was the Wordle answer on December 19, 2022 (Wordle #548).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /sleɪt//slet/
- Noun
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A flake or piece of certain types of stone that tend to cleave into thin layers.
- Noun
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A generally rectangular piece, originally of certain types of stone and now of other materials, often in a frame, used for writing on with a thin rod of the same or another stone (a slate pencil) or with chalk; a small chalkboard.
- Adjective
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Having the bluish-grey colour of slate (noun etymology 1, noun sense 4).
- Verb
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To cover (a building, or part of a building such as a floor or roof) with slates (noun etymology 1, noun sense 1.1).
“The old church ledgers show that the roof was slated in 1775.”
Alternative forms: sclate
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
The noun is derived from Middle English sclate, slat, slate (“type of rock; roofing slate; writing slate”), from Old French esclate, a feminine form of esclat (“broken piece, shard”) (modern French éclat), from Old French esclater (“to break, shatter”), from Frankish *slaitijan (“to split, break”), from Proto-Germanic *slaitijaną, the causative of *slītaną (“to cut up, split”); further etymology unknown (see the Proto-Germanic entry for a discussion). Doublet of éclat and slat.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SLAYT.
Rhymes with GREAT STATE EIGHT PLATE SKATE
Related meanings
Synonyms ticket
In a sentence
Children are a blank slate.
I still have a slate on my desk.
Use SLATE in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 96.9% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: December 19, 2022 (#548).
See the full page for that puzzle: December 19, 2022 (#548).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →SLATE in Connections
5 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #1173
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SLATE appeared in SHADES OF GRAY (blue group).
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· Puzzle #851
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SLATE appeared in KINDS OF ROCKS (green group).
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· Puzzle #501
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SLATE appeared in LINEUP (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #218
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SLATE appeared in LIST OF CANDIDATES (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #44
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SLATE appeared in ANAGRAMS (purple group).
How SLATE performs as a guess
SLATE is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 90.4% of games, misses completely in 9.6%, and leaves about 74 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #87 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.55 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe SLATE 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How SLATE 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches SLATE in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SLATE can come back 148 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for SLATE; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing SLATE
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SLATE.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SLATE:
Research on SLATE
Game-tree analysis and word research for SLATE, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SLATE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.57 guesses and ranks #11 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 SLATE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.55, at or below the proven-optimal 3.57, 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
- SLATE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 7 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.7 of 5).
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).