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

GOOSE

Yes, GOOSE was the Wordle answer on June 11, 2022 (Wordle #357).

As an opener, it rules out about 91.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with GOOSE Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɡuːs//ɡus//ɡʉs/

Noun

Any of various grazing waterfowl of the family Anatidae, which have feathers and webbed feet and are capable of flying, swimming, and walking on land, and which are generally bigger than ducks.

“There is a flock of geese on the pond.”

Noun

A female goose.

Verb

To sharply poke or pinch the buttocks, or prod between the buttocks (of a person).

Verb

To stimulate; to spur.

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: June 11, 2022 (#357).

See the full page for that puzzle: June 11, 2022 (#357).

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

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How GOOSE performs as a guess

GOOSE 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 80.5% of games, misses completely in 19.5%, and leaves about 203 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,751 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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.

G___E G in the 1st position and E in the 5th position G__S_ G in the 1st position and S in the 4th position _O__E O in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe GOOSE 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.

4.49 Entropy (bits)
203 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
91.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 52% of evaluated openers
1.45 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GOOSE 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.

3.78 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#10,751 Rank among openers
Opening with GOOSE left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.78 average. It ranks #10,751 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
751
4 guesses
1,248
5 guesses
275
6 guesses
28
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
3 vowels
Common:
EOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
42%
All gray
20%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L U M P
G O O S E

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches GOOSE in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

GOOSE can come back 82 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

464 answers
384 answers
181 answers
169 answers
113 answers
91 answers
86 answers
65 answers
62 answers
62 answers
49 answers
42 answers
41 answers
39 answers
36 answers
33 answers
32 answers
30 answers
29 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2O1O1S1E1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Try next

TRAIL ALTER STALK RAILE CLARY STEER

Strategy after playing GOOSE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GOOSE:

20% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
16% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
8% chance
Suggested:
STALK

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.5% →
TRAIL 5.93 bits
16.2% →
ALTER 5.37 bits
7.6% →
STALK 5.04 bits
7.1% →
RAILE 4.38 bits
4.8% →
CLARY 4.67 bits
3.8% →
STEER 4.66 bits
3.6% →
MANOR 5.10 bits
2.7% →
CLARY 4.35 bits
2.6% →
SLART 3.91 bits
2.6% →
SHART 4.50 bits

Research on GOOSE

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

Optimal play

Opening with GOOSE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,569 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 GOOSE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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 GOOS.

Rhymes with ABUSE LOOSE JUICE MOOSE TRUCE

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, GOOSE is a kind of fool or poultry.

Synonyms jackass twat cuckoo

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GOOSE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 7 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 4, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 89 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

The goose is up, dude.
© tatoeba.org contributor Adelpa (CC BY 2.0 FR)
A fox killed the goose.
© 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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).