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

GOTHS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of goth

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 GOTHS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GOTHS 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 74.8% of games, misses completely in 25.2%, and leaves about 226 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,553 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 GOTHS 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.

4.41 Entropy (bits)
226 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 46% of evaluated openers
1.54 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GOTHS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#4,553 Rank among openers
Opening with GOTHS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,553 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
928
4 guesses
1,179
5 guesses
193
6 guesses
12
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:
OST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
23%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

GOTHS can come back 80 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

599 answers
207 answers
191 answers
171 answers
119 answers
116 answers
100 answers
92 answers
66 answers
54 answers
53 answers
47 answers
46 answers
40 answers
31 answers
31 answers
26 answers
23 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2O1T1H4S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing GOTHS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GOTHS:

25% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
9% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
8% chance
Suggested:
RAILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.2%
RAILE 6.23 bits
8.7%
RAILE 5.61 bits
8.0%
RAILE 5.68 bits
7.2%
CRANE 5.30 bits
5.0%
RAILE 4.81 bits
4.9%
CARLE 4.72 bits
4.2%
CARLE 5.35 bits
3.9%
RAILE 5.42 bits
2.8%
SERAL 4.70 bits
2.3%
LAIDE 4.99 bits

Research on GOTHS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GOTHS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,273 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 GOTHS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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 GAHTHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, GOTHS is a kind of actor or european.

Synonyms peasant barbarian

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GOTHS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

The ancient Goths and Saxons called this festival Yule.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).