SLICK
Yes, SLICK was the Wordle answer on March 21, 2026 (Wordle #1736).
As an opener, it rules out about 90.8% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /slɪk/
- Adjective
-
Slippery or smooth due to a covering of liquid; often used to describe appearances.
“This rain is making the roads slick.”
- Adjective
-
Sleek; smooth.
- Noun
-
A covering of liquid, particularly oil.
“Careful in turn three — there's an oil slick on the road.”
- Noun
-
Someone who is clever and untrustworthy.
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
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: March 21, 2026 (#1736).
See the full page for that puzzle: March 21, 2026 (#1736).
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 →How SLICK performs as a guess
SLICK 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 74.9% of games, misses completely in 25.1%, and leaves about 220 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,722 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 SLICK 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 SLICK 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 SLICK in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SLICK can come back 96 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 SLICK; 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 SLICK
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SLICK.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SLICK:
Research on SLICK
Game-tree analysis and word research for SLICK, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SLICK, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,368 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,500 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, SLICK is a kind of texture or magazine.
Synonyms slip pat neat tricky cunning glossy
Opposites dull profound
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- SLICK sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 5 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
In a sentence
That was slick of you.
That was a slick job.
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).