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

DORIS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A sea slug.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

* Shortened Anglicized form of Irish Ó Dubhruis, from earlier Ó Dubhrosa, from Ó (“descendant”) + Dubhros, a name from dubh (“black”) + ros (“wood”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it DAWRUHS.

Rhymes with GORIS SORUS

In a sentence

Doris is considerate of everybody's feelings.
© tatoeba.org contributor CN (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use DORIS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.3% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

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

How DORIS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DORIS 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 84.5% of games, misses completely in 15.5%, and leaves about 136 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,426 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 DORIS 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.

4.98 Entropy (bits)
136 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DORIS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#2,426 Rank among openers
Opening with DORIS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,426 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
987
4 guesses
1,107
5 guesses
186
6 guesses
17

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
IORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
28%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

DORIS can come back 100 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

369 answers
215 answers
208 answers
173 answers
110 answers
97 answers
84 answers
82 answers
75 answers
60 answers
59 answers
58 answers
55 answers
54 answers
39 answers
31 answers
30 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2O1R1I1S1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing DORIS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DORIS:

15% chance
Suggested:
LANCE
9% chance
Suggested:
STALE
9% chance
Suggested:
LEANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.5% →
LANCE 6.12 bits
9.0% →
STALE 5.73 bits
8.7% →
LEANT 5.34 bits
7.3% →
CLINE 5.22 bits
4.6% →
ALONE 5.20 bits
4.1% →
THALE 4.49 bits
3.5% →
PALET 4.44 bits
3.4% →
PATER 4.16 bits
3.1% →
STILE 4.39 bits
2.5% →
CAGEY 4.48 bits

Research on DORIS

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

Optimal play

Opening with DORIS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,664 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 DORIS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DORIS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).