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

ZOOID

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

As an opener, it rules out about 80.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈzəʊɔɪd//ˈzuːɔɪd/

Noun

An organic body or cell having locomotion, as a spermatic cell or spermatozoid.

Noun

An animal in one of its inferior or early stages of development, as one of the intermediate forms in alternate generation.

Adjective

Relating to, or resembling, an animal.

Alternative forms: zoöid

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 ZOOID performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ZOOID 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 60.6% of games, misses completely in 39.4%, and leaves about 463 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,976 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.90 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.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

First-turn measures

All four describe ZOOID 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.

3.39 Entropy (bits)
463 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
80.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 5% of evaluated openers
2.55 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ZOOID 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.

3.90 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,976 Rank among openers
Opening with ZOOID left 3 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 3.90 average. It ranks #13,976 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
611
4 guesses
1,289
5 guesses
393
6 guesses
24
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

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
IO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
61%
Green tile
30%
All gray
39%

Feedback distribution

ZOOID can come back 57 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

935 answers
359 answers
167 answers
149 answers
115 answers
112 answers
96 answers
52 answers
42 answers
30 answers
26 answers
26 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Z10O1O1I1D2
Total: 15 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing ZOOID

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ZOOID:

39% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
15% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
7% chance
Suggested:
CARLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

39.4%
TARSE 6.30 bits
15.1%
TRINE 5.35 bits
7.0%
CARLE 4.75 bits
6.3%
CRATE 4.90 bits
4.8%
DEARE 5.12 bits
4.7%
MANOR 5.29 bits
4.0%
LEANT 4.96 bits
2.2%
GRATE 4.47 bits
1.8%
BRANE 4.48 bits
1.3%
PIANO 4.04 bits

Research on ZOOID

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

Optimal play

Opening with ZOOID, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.90 guesses and ranks #13,895 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 ZOOID can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.90, at or below the proven-optimal 3.90, 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 ZOOIHD. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ZOOID is a kind of being.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ZOOID 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).