5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer A tier for first-turn info

ALOES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 96.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with ALOES Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈæ.loʊz//ˈæ.ləʊz/

Noun

plural of aloe

Noun

The resin of the tree Aquilaria malaccensis (syn. Aquilaria agallocha), known for its fragrant odour.

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 ALOES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ALOES 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 92.9% of games, misses completely in 7.1%, and leaves about 79 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,935 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

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

A___S A in the 1st position and S in the 5th position A__E_ A in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _L__S L in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in ALOES.

First-turn measures

All four describe ALOES 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.

5.53 Entropy (bits)
79 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 99% of evaluated openers
0.42 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ALOES 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,935 Rank among openers
Opening with ALOES solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #1,935 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
71
3 guesses
973
4 guesses
1,112
5 guesses
180
6 guesses
18
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
3 vowels
Common:
AELOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
93%
Green tile
35%
All gray
7%

Feedback distribution

ALOES can come back 109 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

180 answers
171 answers
169 answers
129 answers
109 answers
99 answers
93 answers
85 answers
62 answers
62 answers
59 answers
55 answers
55 answers
54 answers
48 answers
46 answers
45 answers
45 answers
38 answers
38 answers
36 answers
32 answers
32 answers
31 answers
29 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1L1O1E1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Try next

TRINE TRAIN PRINT NORTH CRATE DINER

Strategy after playing ALOES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ALOES:

8% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
7% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
7% chance
Suggested:
PRINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

7.6% →
TRINE 5.40 bits
7.2% →
TRAIN 5.07 bits
7.1% →
PRINT 5.40 bits
5.4% →
NORTH 4.95 bits
4.6% →
CRATE 4.92 bits
4.2% →
DINER 4.61 bits
3.9% →
SKIRT 5.10 bits
3.6% →
SCANT 4.48 bits
2.6% →
SEINE 4.73 bits
2.6% →
DILLY 4.61 bits

Research on ALOES

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

Optimal play

Opening with ALOES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,329 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 ALOES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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 second syllable Say it UHLOHZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ALOES is a kind of medicine.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ALOES 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).