5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess F tier for first-turn info

COUCH

Yes, COUCH was the Wordle answer on May 26, 2026 (Wordle #1802).

As an opener, it rules out about 82.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with COUCH Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkaʊ̯t͡ʃ//ˈkɐʊ̯t͡ʃ//ˈkɜʊ̯t͡ʃ/

Noun

An item of furniture, often upholstered, for the comfortable seating of more than one person; a sofa.

Noun

A bed, a resting-place.

Verb

To lie down; to recline (upon a couch or other place of repose).

Verb

To bend the body, as in reverence, pain, labor, etc.; to stoop; to crouch.

Alternative forms: cowch

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: May 26, 2026 (#1802).

See the full page for that puzzle: May 26, 2026 (#1802).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How COUCH performs as a guess

COUCH is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 62.3% of games, misses completely in 37.7%, and leaves about 407 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,809 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.84 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.

C___H C in the 1st position and H in the 5th position C__C_ C in the 1st position and C in the 4th position _O__H O in the 2nd position and H in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe COUCH 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.

3.77 Entropy (bits)
407 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
82.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 14% of evaluated openers
2.17 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How COUCH 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.

3.84 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.76 Spread of game lengths
#12,809 Rank among openers
Opening with COUCH solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.76 means those games clustered within about 0.76 of a guess of the 3.84 average. It ranks #12,809 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
738
4 guesses
1,176
5 guesses
356
6 guesses
41
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
2 vowels
Common:
OU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
62%
Green tile
31%
All gray
38%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S C O L D
C Y N I C
C O U C H

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches COUCH in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

COUCH can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

894 answers
257 answers
184 answers
166 answers
118 answers
85 answers
67 answers
52 answers
51 answers
45 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
21 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1U1C3H4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Try next

RAILE TRONE SILER SLYER TARSE SLANT

Strategy after playing COUCH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing COUCH:

38% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
11% chance
Suggested:
TRONE
8% chance
Suggested:
SILER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

37.7% →
RAILE 6.16 bits
10.8% →
TRONE 5.23 bits
7.8% →
SILER 4.95 bits
7.0% →
SLYER 4.63 bits
5.0% →
TARSE 5.60 bits
3.6% →
SLANT 4.93 bits
2.8% →
SANER 4.75 bits
2.2% →
LEAST 4.70 bits
2.1% →
PAIRE 4.77 bits
1.9% →
TALER 4.49 bits

Research on COUCH

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

Optimal play

Opening with COUCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #13,062 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.02 guesses at best and is rank #6,505 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.84, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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

One syllable Say it KOWCH.

Rhymes with POUCH VOUCH

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, COUCH is a kind of seat or ground.

Synonyms put cast FRAME lounge sofa

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
COUCH sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 15 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Learner level
Appears in beginner learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level A1); among the first words English learners study.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 6, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 87 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.1 of 5).

In a sentence

They made out on that couch.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Please get off the couch.
© tatoeba.org contributor _undertoad (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).