SLIME
Yes, SLIME was the Wordle answer on March 2, 2026 (Wordle #1717).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /slaɪm//slɑem/[slɑe̯m]
- Noun
-
Soft, moist earth or clay, having an adhesive quality; viscous mud; any substance of a dirty nature, that is moist, soft, and adhesive; bitumen; mud containing metallic ore, obtained in the preparatory dressing.
- Noun
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Any mucilaginous substance; or a mucus-like substance which exudes from the bodies of certain animals, such as snails or slugs.
- Verb
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To coat with slime.
- Verb
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To besmirch or disparage.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English slime, slyme, slim, slym, from Old English slīm, from Proto-West Germanic *slīm, from Proto-Germanic *slīmą, from Proto-Indo-European *sley- (“smooth; slick; sticky; slimy”). Cognates include Saterland Frisian Sliem, Dutch slijm, German Schleim (“mucus, slime”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, and Norwegian Nynorsk slim, Swedish slem, Faroese and Icelandic slím (“slime”), Latin limus (“mud”), Ancient Greek λίμνη (límnē, “marsh”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SLYM.
Rhymes with CRIME PRIME CLIMB RHYME CHIME
Related meanings
Synonyms goo sludge muck
In a sentence
The world would be better without such slime.
The pond was covered in green slime.
Use SLIME in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 95.2% 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: March 2, 2026 (#1717).
See the full page for that puzzle: March 2, 2026 (#1717).
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 →SLIME in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #1146
Reveal this appearance's category
SLIME appeared in FRUITS PLUS STARTING LETTER (blue group).
How SLIME performs as a guess
SLIME 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 86.4% of games, misses completely in 13.6%, and leaves about 114 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,306 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 SLIME 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 SLIME 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 SLIME in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SLIME can come back 115 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 SLIME; 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 SLIME
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SLIME.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SLIME:
Research on SLIME
Game-tree analysis and word research for SLIME, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SLIME, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #1,028 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.76 guesses at best and is rank #456 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 3.63, 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
- SLIME sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 6, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 78 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).