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

HEXES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈhɛksɪz/

Noun

plural of hex

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of hex

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

Related meanings

Synonyms WITCH CURSE glamour jinx

Use HEXES in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 85.9% 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 HEXES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HEXES 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 69.0% of games, misses completely in 31.0%, and leaves about 335 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,335 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.93 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 HEXES 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.

3.72 Entropy (bits)
335 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HEXES 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.

3.93 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#14,335 Rank among openers
Opening with HEXES left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.93 average. It ranks #14,335 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
31
3 guesses
596
4 guesses
1,264
5 guesses
422
6 guesses
40

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
27%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

HEXES can come back 56 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

738 answers
290 answers
270 answers
185 answers
142 answers
126 answers
117 answers
68 answers
33 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
29 answers
29 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
11 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4E1X8E1S1
Total: 15 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing HEXES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HEXES:

31% chance
Suggested:
TALON
12% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
11% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.0% →
TALON 5.80 bits
12.2% →
RAILE 5.00 bits
11.3% →
SAINT 5.31 bits
7.8% →
RAINY 4.35 bits
6.0% →
TORCH 5.17 bits
5.3% →
SLART 4.74 bits
4.9% →
LAIRY 4.78 bits
2.9% →
SLART 4.42 bits
1.4% →
TRADE 3.92 bits
1.4% →
TRICE 4.39 bits

Research on HEXES

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

Optimal play

Opening with HEXES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.90 guesses and ranks #13,860 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 HEXES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.93; proven optimal play reaches 3.90. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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
HEXES 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (3.0 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); 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).