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

HOSEL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.4% of possible answers.

Open Solver with HOSEL Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

The portion of the head of a golf club to which the shaft of the club attaches.

Noun

A semester, in the context of a course of study which should be enjoyable as opposed to required work.

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 HOSEL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HOSEL 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 88.6% of games, misses completely in 11.4%, and leaves about 110 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,021 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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___L H in the 1st position and L in the 5th position H__E_ H in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _O__L O in the 2nd position and L in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe HOSEL 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.

5.20 Entropy (bits)
110 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 92% of evaluated openers
0.75 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HOSEL 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#3,021 Rank among openers
Opening with HOSEL 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 3.64 average. It ranks #3,021 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
75
3 guesses
913
4 guesses
1,171
5 guesses
180
6 guesses
15
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:
ELOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
32%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

HOSEL can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

270 answers
252 answers
134 answers
131 answers
124 answers
123 answers
110 answers
98 answers
81 answers
74 answers
58 answers
44 answers
44 answers
43 answers
41 answers
40 answers
37 answers
36 answers
34 answers
31 answers
29 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4O1S1E1L1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

TRAIN TIARE APRON AIDER SCANT RAINY

Strategy after playing HOSEL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HOSEL:

11% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
11% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
6% chance
Suggested:
APRON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.4% →
TRAIN 5.97 bits
10.6% →
TIARE 5.39 bits
5.6% →
APRON 5.11 bits
5.5% →
AIDER 4.18 bits
5.2% →
SCANT 5.17 bits
5.2% →
RAINY 4.63 bits
4.6% →
BLATE 4.49 bits
4.1% →
REATE 4.81 bits
3.4% →
DONOR 4.06 bits
3.1% →
CHART 4.82 bits

Research on HOSEL

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

Optimal play

Opening with HOSEL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,515 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 HOSEL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it HOHSUHL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HOSEL 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).