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

HEATS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /hiːts/

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of heat

Noun

plural of heat (countable senses)

Noun

A period of hot weather.

“Everyone suffered during the heats of July.”

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it HEETS.

Rhymes with SEATS MEETS BEATS MEATS FEATS

Related meanings

Synonyms wake passion heating warmth ignite rut

Opposites cool

In a sentence

The Sun heats the atmosphere.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The sun's warmth heats my home.
© tatoeba.org contributor cntrational (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use HEATS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.2% of possible answers.

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 HEATS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HEATS 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 87.8% of games, misses completely in 12.2%, and leaves about 114 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,908 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 HEATS 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.

5.28 Entropy (bits)
114 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HEATS 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#1,908 Rank among openers
Opening with HEATS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #1,908 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
80
3 guesses
925
4 guesses
1,170
5 guesses
171
6 guesses
7

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AEST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
30%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

HEATS can come back 119 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

291 answers
266 answers
193 answers
119 answers
96 answers
91 answers
83 answers
77 answers
68 answers
66 answers
66 answers
57 answers
51 answers
41 answers
37 answers
32 answers
31 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4E1A1T1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing HEATS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HEATS:

12% chance
Suggested:
COULD
11% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
8% chance
Suggested:
CAROL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.2% →
COULD 5.47 bits
11.2% →
DROLE 5.27 bits
8.1% →
CAROL 5.23 bits
5.0% →
LARGE 4.67 bits
4.0% →
SPOIL 4.77 bits
3.8% →
GENRE 4.21 bits
3.5% →
SPIRE 4.78 bits
3.2% →
COURT 4.97 bits
2.9% →
ENTER 4.53 bits
2.8% →
TALON 4.39 bits

Research on HEATS

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

Optimal play

Opening with HEATS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,239 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 HEATS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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
HEATS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with touch (4.1 of 5).

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).