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

VICUS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A small civilian settlement outside a Roman fort.

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

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

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 VICUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts VICUS 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 71.8% of games, misses completely in 28.2%, and leaves about 285 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,230 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 VICUS 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.

3.99 Entropy (bits)
285 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 22% of evaluated openers
1.96 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How VICUS 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
99.83% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#10,230 Rank among openers
Opening with VICUS left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,230 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
750
4 guesses
1,297
5 guesses
245
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ISU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
16%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

VICUS can come back 67 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

670 answers
278 answers
210 answers
179 answers
168 answers
122 answers
90 answers
81 answers
58 answers
50 answers
46 answers
44 answers
35 answers
35 answers
29 answers
28 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

V4I1C3U1S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing VICUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing VICUS:

28% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
12% chance
Suggested:
STARE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.2%
ALTER 6.09 bits
11.7%
STARE 5.71 bits
8.8%
TRINE 5.64 bits
7.5%
RONTE 5.08 bits
7.1%
CRANE 5.57 bits
5.1%
RONTE 4.66 bits
3.8%
STILE 4.45 bits
3.4%
SLART 4.36 bits
2.4%
CLINE 4.28 bits
2.1%
LEARE 4.99 bits

Research on VICUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with VICUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #10,983 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.93 guesses at best and is rank #4,933 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 3.81, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it VIHKUHS. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
VICUS 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).