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

HEMES

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

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

Open Solver with HEMES Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of heme

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 HEMES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HEMES 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 73.7% of games, misses completely in 26.3%, and leaves about 255 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,038 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.

H___S H in the 1st position and S in the 5th position H__E_ H in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _E__S E in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position HE_ES H in the 1st position, E in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe HEMES 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.

4.21 Entropy (bits)
255 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 33% of evaluated openers
1.73 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HEMES 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
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#11,038 Rank among openers
Opening with HEMES solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.78 average. It ranks #11,038 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
748
4 guesses
1,271
5 guesses
277
6 guesses
20
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
2 vowels
Common:
ES

Feedback chances

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

Feedback distribution

HEMES can come back 71 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

625 answers
264 answers
237 answers
166 answers
120 answers
113 answers
95 answers
89 answers
63 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
32 answers
30 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4E1M3E1S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

TALON ORATE SAINT RAINY TORCH SLART

Strategy after playing HEMES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HEMES:

26% chance
Suggested:
TALON
11% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
10% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.3% →
TALON 5.89 bits
11.1% →
ORATE 5.05 bits
10.0% →
SAINT 5.38 bits
7.0% →
RAINY 4.34 bits
5.1% →
TORCH 5.10 bits
4.8% →
SLART 4.78 bits
4.0% →
LAIRY 4.72 bits
3.7% →
MAYOR 4.91 bits
2.7% →
SLART 4.41 bits
1.4% →
BAILE 4.31 bits

Research on HEMES

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

Optimal play

Opening with HEMES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,026 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 HEMES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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 HEHMZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, HEMES is a kind of edge or communication.

Synonyms ahem

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HEMES 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); 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).