Possible answer Not used yet B tier for first-turn info

SLEET

SLEET is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /sliːt/

Noun

Pellets of ice made of mostly-frozen raindrops or refrozen melted snowflakes.

Noun

Precipitation in the form of a mixture of rain and snow.

Verb

To be in a state in which sleet is falling.

“I won't bother going out until it's stopped sleeting.”

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 SLEET performs as a guess

SLEET is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 82.4% of games, misses completely in 17.6%, and leaves about 139 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,559 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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 SLEET 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.

5.14 Entropy (bits)
139 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
94.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 90% of evaluated openers
0.81 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SLEET 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#3,559 Rank among openers
Opening with SLEET left 1 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 3.65 average. It ranks #3,559 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
70
3 guesses
916
4 guesses
1,158
5 guesses
190
6 guesses
18
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ELST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
45%
All gray
18%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L E E T

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches SLEET in 2 guesses.

Feedback distribution

SLEET can come back 117 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

418 answers
210 answers
158 answers
140 answers
112 answers
99 answers
76 answers
74 answers
73 answers
71 answers
68 answers
43 answers
41 answers
40 answers
38 answers
34 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1L1E1E1T1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing SLEET

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SLEET:

18% chance
Suggested:
ROANY
9% chance
Suggested:
IRADE
7% chance
Suggested:
LOYAL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.6%
ROANY 5.77 bits
8.8%
IRADE 5.17 bits
6.7%
LOYAL 5.05 bits
5.9%
NORTH 4.99 bits
4.7%
RAINY 4.36 bits
4.2%
ROANY 4.76 bits
3.2%
RIONE 4.44 bits
3.1%
FLANK 4.21 bits
3.1%
AMISS 4.81 bits
3.0%
REALM 4.23 bits

Research on SLEET

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

Optimal play

Opening with SLEET, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,169 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 SLEET can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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

One syllable Say it SLEET.

Rhymes with SWEET TREAT ELITE SHEET FLEET

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SLEET is a kind of precipitation or fall.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SLEET 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.6 of 5).

In a sentence

Sleet was falling from the sky.
© tatoeba.org contributor AlanF_US (CC BY 2.0 FR)
It's not much fun to walk through sleet without even a warm jacket.
© tatoeba.org contributor AlanF_US (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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).