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

SLIVE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /slaɪv//slɪv/

Verb

To live life to the fullest while being successful, glamorous, and confident.

Verb

To cut; split; separate.

Noun

A slice or sliver; slip, chip.

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

Etymology

From Middle English sliven, from Old English slīfan (“to cleave, split”), from Proto-West Germanic *slīban, from Proto-Germanic *slībaną (“to split”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)kelH- (“to cut”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use SLIVE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.1% 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 SLIVE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SLIVE 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 83.3% of games, misses completely in 16.7%, and leaves about 142 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,467 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 SLIVE 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.

5.01 Entropy (bits)
142 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SLIVE 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#5,467 Rank among openers
Opening with SLIVE left 2 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 3.68 average. It ranks #5,467 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
72
3 guesses
860
4 guesses
1,192
5 guesses
211
6 guesses
17

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EILS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
42%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

SLIVE can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

398 answers
262 answers
147 answers
123 answers
122 answers
115 answers
93 answers
78 answers
68 answers
67 answers
47 answers
45 answers
44 answers
40 answers
39 answers
38 answers
34 answers
29 answers
29 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1L1I1V4E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing SLIVE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SLIVE:

17% chance
Suggested:
COURT
11% chance
Suggested:
OATER
6% chance
Suggested:
ANTIC

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.7% →
COURT 5.81 bits
11.0% →
OATER 5.11 bits
6.2% →
ANTIC 5.18 bits
5.2% →
GRACE 4.56 bits
5.1% →
ROAST 4.48 bits
4.8% →
LOYAL 4.90 bits
3.9% →
RENAL 4.45 bits
3.3% →
TRASH 4.99 bits
2.9% →
CANOE 4.02 bits
2.8% →
TRONE 4.27 bits

Research on SLIVE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SLIVE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,970 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.84 guesses at best and is rank #2,525 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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
SLIVE 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).