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

COUTH

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkuːθ/[ˈkʰʊu̯θ]

Adjective

Variant of couthie.

Adjective

Marked by or possessing a high degree of sophistication; cultured, refined.

Noun

Social grace, refinement, sophistication; etiquette, manners.

“That man has no couth.”

Noun

A person with social graces; a refined or sophisticated person.

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 COUTH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts COUTH 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 73.8% of games, misses completely in 26.2%, and leaves about 228 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,839 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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 COUTH 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.

4.64 Entropy (bits)
228 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 61% of evaluated openers
1.31 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How COUTH 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#3,839 Rank among openers
Opening with COUTH solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.65 average. It ranks #3,839 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
962
4 guesses
1,094
5 guesses
212
6 guesses
25
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
2 vowels
Common:
OTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
32%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

COUTH can come back 106 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

621 answers
216 answers
192 answers
136 answers
127 answers
80 answers
75 answers
63 answers
59 answers
57 answers
51 answers
38 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1U1T1H4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing COUTH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing COUTH:

26% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
9% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
8% chance
Suggested:
ARSON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.2%
RAILE 6.27 bits
9.1%
SLIER 5.77 bits
8.1%
ARSON 5.19 bits
5.7%
SILER 4.88 bits
5.3%
DROLE 4.64 bits
3.4%
RAILE 5.03 bits
3.2%
SARED 5.19 bits
2.7%
RAIKE 4.73 bits
2.5%
ARIEL 4.44 bits
2.4%
PARSE 4.61 bits

Research on COUTH

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

Optimal play

Opening with COUTH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,995 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 COUTH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 KOOTH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, COUTH is a kind of perfection.

Synonyms refined

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
COUTH 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).