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

DHOWS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of dhow

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 DHOWS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DHOWS 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 68.4% of games, misses completely in 31.6%, and leaves about 324 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,449 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 DHOWS 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.

3.98 Entropy (bits)
324 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 22% of evaluated openers
1.96 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DHOWS 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#8,449 Rank among openers
Opening with DHOWS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,449 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
824
4 guesses
1,226
5 guesses
250
6 guesses
11
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
1 vowels
Common:
OS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
21%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

DHOWS can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

749 answers
306 answers
232 answers
134 answers
107 answers
90 answers
64 answers
54 answers
51 answers
44 answers
44 answers
43 answers
40 answers
36 answers
36 answers
27 answers
23 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
18 answers
15 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2H4O1W4S1
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing DHOWS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DHOWS:

32% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
13% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
10% chance
Suggested:
TALER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.6%
RAILE 6.23 bits
12.9%
TIARE 5.64 bits
9.8%
TALER 5.34 bits
5.6%
RAILE 5.67 bits
4.5%
CARTE 5.28 bits
3.8%
GRATE 4.51 bits
2.7%
URITE 5.02 bits
2.3%
PEART 3.93 bits
2.1%
RAISE 4.27 bits
1.9%
WATER 4.83 bits

Research on DHOWS

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

Optimal play

Opening with DHOWS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,354 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 DHOWS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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 DOWZ.

Rhymes with BROWS HOWES PLOWS CHOWS THOUS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, DHOWS is a kind of vessel.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DHOWS 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).