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

GROSS

Yes, GROSS was the Wordle answer on October 17, 2025 (Wordle #1581).

As an opener, it rules out about 89.3% of possible answers.

Open Solver with GROSS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɡɹəʊs//ɡɹoʊs//ɡɹɔs/

Adjective

remarkably great, big, vast in an often unpleasant way; (of behaviour) Highly or conspicuously offensive.

“a gross mistake; gross injustice; gross negligence; a gross insult”

Adjective

Excluding any deductions; including all associated amounts.

“gross domestic product; gross income; gross weight”

Noun

Twelve dozen = 144.

“We need to order three gross of torx screws for next week.”

Noun

The total amount (of goods, money, etc) before taxes, expenses, exceptions, tares, or similar deductions are subtracted.

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: October 17, 2025 (#1581).

See the full page for that puzzle: October 17, 2025 (#1581).

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

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How verification and withdrawal work

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How GROSS performs as a guess

GROSS 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 74.3% of games, misses completely in 25.7%, and leaves about 255 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,033 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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___S G in the 1st position and S in the 5th position G__S_ G in the 1st position and S in the 4th position _R__S R in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe GROSS 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.

4.13 Entropy (bits)
255 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
89.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 29% of evaluated openers
1.82 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GROSS 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#10,033 Rank among openers
Opening with GROSS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #10,033 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
776
4 guesses
1,258
5 guesses
256
6 guesses
22
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
1 vowels
Common:
ORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
28%
All gray
26%

Example solver route

R O A T E
G R I N D
A L B U M
G R O S S

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches GROSS in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

GROSS can come back 70 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

611 answers
270 answers
238 answers
192 answers
136 answers
115 answers
91 answers
81 answers
74 answers
49 answers
49 answers
45 answers
34 answers
31 answers
27 answers
23 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2R1O1S1S1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Try next

LIANE TERRA PLATE TONAL CADIE CORER

Strategy after playing GROSS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GROSS:

26% chance
Suggested:
LIANE
11% chance
Suggested:
TERRA
10% chance
Suggested:
PLATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.7% →
LIANE 6.09 bits
11.4% →
TERRA 5.22 bits
10.0% →
PLATE 5.64 bits
8.1% →
TONAL 5.06 bits
5.7% →
CADIE 5.12 bits
4.8% →
CORER 4.42 bits
3.8% →
LIANE 5.38 bits
3.4% →
PARTE 4.61 bits
3.1% →
BLATE 4.53 bits
2.1% →
THALE 4.77 bits

Research on GROSS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GROSS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,952 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,094 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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 GROHS.

Rhymes with CLOSE ADIOS GROSZ BOWSE

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, GROSS is a kind of integer or amount.

Synonyms perfect complete pure revenue crying rank

Opposites net specific thin decent

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GROSS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 28 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Learner level
Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B2); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 8, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 57 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.

In a sentence

Does it gross you out?
© tatoeba.org contributor DJ_Saidez (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The word you said was gross.
© tatoeba.org contributor mervert1 (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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).