VIRAL
Yes, VIRAL was the Wordle answer on December 10, 2021 (Wordle #174).
As an opener, it rules out about 93.8% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈvaɪɹəl/
- Adjective
-
Of or relating to a biological virus.
“viral DNA”
- Adjective
-
Caused by a virus.
“viral infection”
- Noun
-
A video, image or text spread by "word of mouth" on the internet or by e-mail for humorous, political or marketing purposes.
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: December 10, 2021 (#174).
See the full page for that puzzle: December 10, 2021 (#174).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Wordle Observatory · optional
Played this Wordle?
Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds
Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.
See the public dataThank you. Your result now helps describe this puzzle.
See what the public sample says →How VIRAL performs as a guess
VIRAL 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 85.8% of games, misses completely in 14.2%, and leaves about 146 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,602 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe VIRAL 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 VIRAL 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 VIRAL in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
VIRAL can come back 110 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 VIRAL; 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 VIRAL
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to VIRAL.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing VIRAL:
Research on VIRAL
Game-tree analysis and word research for VIRAL, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with VIRAL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,973 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,828 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 3.73, 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 VYRUHL.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- VIRAL sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 12 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
In a sentence
I guess it went viral.
The video has gone viral.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).