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

HOLTS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of holt

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 HOLTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HOLTS 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 80.8% of games, misses completely in 19.2%, and leaves about 165 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,169 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe HOLTS 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.

4.83 Entropy (bits)
165 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 74% of evaluated openers
1.11 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HOLTS 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
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#1,169 Rank among openers
Opening with HOLTS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #1,169 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
1,021
4 guesses
1,092
5 guesses
175
6 guesses
11
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

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LOST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
24%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

HOLTS can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

456 answers
246 answers
166 answers
154 answers
152 answers
96 answers
87 answers
59 answers
53 answers
52 answers
50 answers
48 answers
46 answers
44 answers
43 answers
43 answers
37 answers
36 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4O1L1T1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing HOLTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HOLTS:

19% chance
Suggested:
DAINE
10% chance
Suggested:
RAINE
7% chance
Suggested:
PAIRE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.2%
DAINE 6.14 bits
10.4%
RAINE 5.47 bits
7.0%
PAIRE 5.61 bits
6.5%
TRAIN 5.57 bits
6.4%
CRANE 5.38 bits
4.0%
RANCE 4.61 bits
3.7%
SNARE 4.69 bits
2.5%
CRANE 5.17 bits
2.2%
SAKER 4.56 bits
2.2%
BLEAT 4.44 bits

Research on HOLTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with HOLTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,938 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.77 guesses at best and is rank #620 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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 HOHLTS.

Rhymes with BOLTS COLTS VOLTS JOLTS

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HOLTS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).