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

XYLEM

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈzaɪ.ləm/

Noun

A vascular tissue in land plants primarily responsible for the distribution of water and minerals taken up by the roots; also the primary component of wood.

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 XYLEM performs as a guess

Wordle accepts XYLEM 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 76.9% of games, misses completely in 23.1%, and leaves about 278 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,348 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.86 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 XYLEM 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.

3.85 Entropy (bits)
278 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 16% of evaluated openers
2.10 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How XYLEM 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.

3.86 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,348 Rank among openers
Opening with XYLEM 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 3.86 average. It ranks #13,348 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
664
4 guesses
1,274
5 guesses
349
6 guesses
29
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
1 vowels
Common:
EL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
20%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

XYLEM can come back 59 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

548 answers
434 answers
230 answers
199 answers
190 answers
131 answers
100 answers
63 answers
47 answers
46 answers
40 answers
32 answers
30 answers
28 answers
25 answers
21 answers
19 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

X8Y4L1E1M3
Total: 17 points

Words With Friends

Total: 18 points

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

Strategy after playing XYLEM

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing XYLEM:

23% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
18% chance
Suggested:
ARISE
10% chance
Suggested:
COAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.1%
TRAIN 6.22 bits
18.3%
ARISE 5.33 bits
9.7%
COAST 5.16 bits
8.4%
SAUNT 4.91 bits
8.0%
STAIR 4.61 bits
5.5%
SLATE 4.72 bits
4.2%
ROAST 4.95 bits
2.7%
SONAR 3.75 bits
2.0%
ARISE 4.48 bits
1.9%
DEARE 4.15 bits

Research on XYLEM

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

Optimal play

Opening with XYLEM, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,494 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 XYLEM can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.86; proven optimal play reaches 3.84. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 ZYLUHM. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
XYLEM 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.

In a sentence

Xylem ensure that plants have enough water and nutrients to produce food.
© tatoeba.org contributor letsgolanguages (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).