HOOCH
HOOCH is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /huːt͡ʃ/
- Noun
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An alcoholic beverage, especially an inferior or illicit one and especially liquor such as whisky.
- Noun
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A thatched hut, CHU, or any simple dwelling.
Alternative forms: hootch
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
Abbreviation of hoochinoo, name of a specific liquor, from Tlingit Xutsnoowú Ḵwáan, the group that produced it, from Hutsnuwu (“grizzly bear fort”), the name of the village on Admiralty Island in which they lived. From Tlingit xóots (“grizzly bear”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it HOOCH.
Rhymes with POOCH
Use HOOCH in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 73.9% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →HOOCH in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #734
Reveal this appearance's category
HOOCH appeared in DOGS OF THE SCREEN (blue group).
How HOOCH performs as a guess
Wordle accepts HOOCH 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 50.9% of games, misses completely in 49.1%, and leaves about 622 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,394 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.94 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe HOOCH 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How HOOCH 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Feedback distribution
HOOCH can come back 50 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for HOOCH; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing HOOCH
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to HOOCH.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing HOOCH:
Research on HOOCH
Game-tree analysis and word research for HOOCH, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with HOOCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.96 guesses and ranks #14,493 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 4.12 guesses at best and is rank #7,213 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.94, at or below the proven-optimal 3.96, 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
- HOOCH 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 taste (3.2 of 5).
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).