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

HOSED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with HOSED Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /həʊzd//hoʊzd/

Verb

simple past and past participle of hose

Adjective

Wearing hose.

Adjective

Ruined, messed up.

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 HOSED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HOSED 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 85.3% of games, misses completely in 14.7%, and leaves about 144 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,583 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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___D H in the 1st position and D in the 5th position H__E_ H in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _O__D O in the 2nd position and D in the 5th position HO_ED H in the 1st position, O in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and D in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe HOSED 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.

4.90 Entropy (bits)
144 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 78% of evaluated openers
1.05 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HOSED 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,583 Rank among openers
Opening with HOSED solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,583 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
62
3 guesses
884
4 guesses
1,208
5 guesses
186
6 guesses
14
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
2 vowels
Common:
EOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
31%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

HOSED can come back 96 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

350 answers
295 answers
167 answers
155 answers
153 answers
110 answers
88 answers
84 answers
72 answers
58 answers
56 answers
49 answers
47 answers
46 answers
38 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4O1S1E1D2
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

TRAIL LEARE SLANT TALON LATER SLART

Strategy after playing HOSED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HOSED:

15% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
12% chance
Suggested:
LEARE
7% chance
Suggested:
SLANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.7% →
TRAIL 5.85 bits
12.4% →
LEARE 5.50 bits
7.0% →
SLANT 5.25 bits
6.5% →
TALON 5.12 bits
6.4% →
LATER 4.52 bits
4.6% →
SLART 4.96 bits
3.7% →
CLARY 4.59 bits
3.5% →
CHART 4.77 bits
3.0% →
GEARE 4.57 bits
2.4% →
DRAIN 4.72 bits

Research on HOSED

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

Optimal play

Opening with HOSED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,997 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 HOSED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, 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 HOHZD.

Rhymes with POSED NOSED DOZED

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, HOSED is a kind of footwear or garment.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HOSED 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 sight (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).