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

VIREO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈvi.ɹi.oʊ/

Noun

Any of a number of small insectivorous passerine birds, of the genus Vireo, that have grey-green plumage.

Noun

Any bird of the family Vireonidae, which includes vireos, shrike-vireos, greenlets, and peppershrikes.

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 VIREO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts VIREO 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 86.9% of games, misses completely in 13.1%, and leaves about 137 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,595 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 VIREO 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.

4.89 Entropy (bits)
137 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 77% of evaluated openers
1.06 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How VIREO 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#6,595 Rank among openers
Opening with VIREO left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,595 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
865
4 guesses
1,158
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
3 vowels
Common:
EIOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
29%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

VIREO can come back 104 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

310 answers
277 answers
215 answers
157 answers
113 answers
109 answers
108 answers
85 answers
81 answers
78 answers
71 answers
69 answers
67 answers
42 answers
38 answers
33 answers
32 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

V4I1R1E1O1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing VIREO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing VIREO:

13% chance
Suggested:
SLANT
12% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
9% chance
Suggested:
SLATY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.1%
SLANT 5.77 bits
11.7%
SLATE 5.82 bits
9.1%
SLATY 5.08 bits
6.6%
SLANT 5.61 bits
4.8%
TRACE 4.83 bits
4.6%
SLANT 4.90 bits
4.5%
ARSON 4.24 bits
3.6%
SAULT 3.90 bits
3.4%
SLANT 4.50 bits
3.3%
SHALT 4.13 bits

Research on VIREO

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

Optimal play

Opening with VIREO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,070 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with VIREO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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

Three syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it VIHREEOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, VIREO is a kind of bird.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
VIREO 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).