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

VIRES

VIRES 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

Noun

plural of vire

Noun

plural of vis

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of vire

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 VIRES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts VIRES 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 85.1% of games, misses completely in 14.9%, and leaves about 138 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,893 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 VIRES 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.

4.88 Entropy (bits)
138 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 VIRES 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#6,893 Rank among openers
Opening with VIRES left 1 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 #6,893 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
856
4 guesses
1,164
5 guesses
251
6 guesses
16
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:
EIRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
29%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

VIRES can come back 98 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

354 answers
234 answers
177 answers
166 answers
133 answers
115 answers
112 answers
97 answers
75 answers
74 answers
69 answers
62 answers
61 answers
59 answers
46 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

V4I1R1E1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing VIRES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing VIRES:

15% chance
Suggested:
TONAL
10% chance
Suggested:
DEALT
7% chance
Suggested:
SLANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.9%
TONAL 5.69 bits
9.9%
DEALT 5.51 bits
7.5%
SLANT 5.24 bits
7.0%
ACORN 4.90 bits
5.6%
ANTIC 5.15 bits
4.8%
TRACE 4.88 bits
4.7%
SLANT 4.87 bits
4.1%
OATER 3.35 bits
3.2%
MINTY 3.76 bits
3.1%
EATEN 4.30 bits

Research on VIRES

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

Optimal play

Opening with VIRES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,671 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 VIRES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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

One syllable Say it VYRZ.

Rhymes with SIRES MIRES

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
VIRES 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).