AMBER

Meaning

Ambergris, the waxy product of the sperm whale.

• verbTo perfume or flavour with ambergris.
• adjectiveOf a brownish yellow colour, like that of most amber.

AMBER as a word-puzzle answer

AMBER is a 5-letter word with 2 vowels (A, E) and 3 consonants (M, B, R). Every letter is distinct, so it rarely punishes a clean opening guess.

It leans on high-frequency letters (A, E, R), so a strong vowel-and-common-consonant opener tends to light up quickly. There are no rare letters here, so it is a fair, mid-difficulty answer for the daily Classic puzzle.