5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer A tier for first-turn info

HALSE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: [hoːs][haːs][hoːz]

Verb

To greet; salute; hail.

Verb

To beseech; adjure.

Noun

Alternative form of hawse.

Noun

The neck; the throat.

“Well, as you know they used to hang folk by the halse for horse theft.”

Alternative forms: hawse, haulse, halsh, hose

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

Etymology

From Middle English halsen, halchen, from Old English *halsian, *healsian (“to embrace”, literally “to fall upon the neck of”), from heals (“neck”). See above. Cognate with Old Saxon helsjen (“to embrace”), Old High German halsōn (German halsen (“to jibe”)), Icelandic hálsa (“to embrace”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use HALSE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.0% of possible answers.

Open Solver with HALSE Open Word Finder

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 HALSE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HALSE 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 89.3% of games, misses completely in 10.7%, and leaves about 95 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,034 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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.

H___E H in the 1st position and E in the 5th position H__S_ H in the 1st position and S in the 4th position _A__E A in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position HA_SE H in the 1st position, A in the 2nd position, S in the 4th position, and E in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe HALSE 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.

5.48 Entropy (bits)
95 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HALSE 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#1,034 Rank among openers
Opening with HALSE 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 3.60 average. It ranks #1,034 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
98
3 guesses
956
4 guesses
1,105
5 guesses
178
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
39%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

HALSE can come back 131 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

254 answers
221 answers
125 answers
121 answers
109 answers
108 answers
105 answers
89 answers
86 answers
75 answers
58 answers
53 answers
48 answers
45 answers
38 answers
37 answers
35 answers
35 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4A1L1S1E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

DROIT TENOR TRAIN GRICE TONEY COULD

Strategy after playing HALSE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HALSE:

11% chance
Suggested:
DROIT
9% chance
Suggested:
TENOR
5% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.7% →
DROIT 5.70 bits
9.3% →
TENOR 5.15 bits
5.2% →
TRAIN 5.30 bits
5.1% →
GRICE 4.34 bits
4.6% →
TONEY 4.02 bits
4.5% →
COULD 4.74 bits
4.4% →
SNORT 5.06 bits
3.7% →
TOUCH 5.03 bits
3.6% →
ALTAR 4.16 bits
3.1% →
ELDER 4.29 bits

Research on HALSE

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

Optimal play

Opening with HALSE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #665 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 HALSE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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
HALSE 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.

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