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

DOZES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of doze

Noun

plural of doze

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 DOZES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DOZES 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 81.5% of games, misses completely in 18.5%, and leaves about 204 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,787 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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 DOZES 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.

4.26 Entropy (bits)
204 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 36% of evaluated openers
1.68 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DOZES 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#11,787 Rank among openers
Opening with DOZES solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,787 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
708
4 guesses
1,319
5 guesses
275
6 guesses
19
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:
EOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
29%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

DOZES can come back 61 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

439 answers
345 answers
233 answers
174 answers
164 answers
138 answers
118 answers
65 answers
64 answers
61 answers
59 answers
46 answers
43 answers
34 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2O1Z10E1S1
Total: 15 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing DOZES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DOZES:

18% chance
Suggested:
CAIRN
15% chance
Suggested:
REATE
10% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.5%
CAIRN 5.91 bits
14.5%
REATE 5.53 bits
9.8%
SLART 5.25 bits
7.3%
TALON 5.12 bits
6.9%
LATER 4.53 bits
5.8%
SLART 5.02 bits
5.0%
CLARY 4.54 bits
2.7%
RAILE 4.55 bits
2.7%
NADIR 4.69 bits
2.6%
PLANE 4.27 bits

Research on DOZES

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

Optimal play

Opening with DOZES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,370 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 DOZES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80; proven optimal play reaches 3.77. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 first syllable Say it DOHZIHZ.

Rhymes with ROSES NOSES HOSES

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, DOZES is a kind of sleeping or nap.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DOZES 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.0 of 5).

In a sentence

Tom often dozes off in French class.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).