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

SRSLY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /sɚsli//sɑɹsli/

Interjection

Are you serious? Really?

“A: My mum just broke her leg… B: srsly?!”

Adverb

Seriously.

“A: She's srsly afraid to go out now. B: Yeah, that's understandable.”

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

Etymology

A shortening of seriously by removing the vowels, as is common on IRC or texting.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use SRSLY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.0% 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 SRSLY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SRSLY 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 79.9% of games, misses completely in 20.1%, and leaves about 216 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,533 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 SRSLY 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.

4.23 Entropy (bits)
216 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SRSLY 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#10,533 Rank among openers
Opening with SRSLY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,533 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
780
4 guesses
1,251
5 guesses
262
6 guesses
26

Composition

4/5 unique
0 vowels
Common:
LRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
46%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

SRSLY can come back 68 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

480 answers
292 answers
278 answers
201 answers
160 answers
146 answers
83 answers
72 answers
68 answers
65 answers
59 answers
40 answers
39 answers
29 answers
28 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
21 answers
19 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1R1S1L1Y4
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing SRSLY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SRSLY:

20% chance
Suggested:
NAICE
12% chance
Suggested:
OATER
12% chance
Suggested:
CANOE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.1% →
NAICE 6.05 bits
12.2% →
OATER 5.28 bits
11.7% →
CANOE 5.36 bits
8.4% →
COATE 5.10 bits
6.7% →
ATONE 5.29 bits
6.1% →
DAINE 4.65 bits
3.5% →
PARTE 4.60 bits
3.0% →
COATE 4.78 bits
2.9% →
CLEAR 4.40 bits
2.7% →
WAITE 4.71 bits

Research on SRSLY

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

Optimal play

Opening with SRSLY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,657 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.97 guesses at best and is rank #5,751 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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
SRSLY 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).