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

XERIC

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈzɪɚ.ɪk//ˈzɛɹ-//ˈzɪə.ɹɪk/

Adjective

Very dry, lacking humidity and water.

Adjective

Adapted to live in a very dry habitat.

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

Use XERIC in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.3% 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 XERIC performs as a guess

Wordle accepts XERIC 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 82.2% of games, misses completely in 17.8%, and leaves about 183 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,273 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 XERIC 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.

4.39 Entropy (bits)
183 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How XERIC 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
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#10,273 Rank among openers
Opening with XERIC left 4 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 #10,273 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
773
4 guesses
1,251
5 guesses
262
6 guesses
23

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
22%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

XERIC can come back 66 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

425 answers
300 answers
181 answers
181 answers
177 answers
132 answers
104 answers
96 answers
64 answers
62 answers
60 answers
59 answers
57 answers
51 answers
45 answers
37 answers
34 answers
31 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
18 answers
18 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

X8E1R1I1C3
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing XERIC

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing XERIC:

18% chance
Suggested:
SAULT
13% chance
Suggested:
SLANT
8% chance
Suggested:
ARSON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.8% →
SAULT 5.95 bits
12.6% →
SLANT 5.68 bits
7.6% →
ARSON 5.11 bits
7.6% →
POTAE 4.50 bits
7.4% →
SLANT 5.26 bits
5.5% →
SLANT 5.07 bits
4.4% →
SALTY 4.83 bits
4.0% →
SLANT 4.69 bits
2.7% →
SNIDE 3.80 bits
2.6% →
SALTY 4.49 bits

Research on XERIC

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

Optimal play

Opening with XERIC, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,904 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,223 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 3.80, 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
XERIC 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).