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

HOSEN

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Coverings for the legs; trousers; pants.

Noun

plural of hose (the old-fashioned garment; stockings)

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

Etymology

From Middle English hosen, from Old English hosan (“hosen, leggings, trousers”), plural of hosa (“hose, legging, stocking”); reinforced by German Hosen (“trousers, pants”). Equivalent to hose + -en (plural ending).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use HOSEN in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with HOSEN Open Word Finder

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 HOSEN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HOSEN 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 87.3% of games, misses completely in 12.7%, and leaves about 127 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,869 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___N H in the 1st position and N in the 5th position H__E_ H in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _O__N O in the 2nd position and N in the 5th position HO_EN H in the 1st position, O in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and N in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe HOSEN 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.

5.10 Entropy (bits)
127 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HOSEN 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
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#2,869 Rank among openers
Opening with HOSEN solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #2,869 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
76
3 guesses
931
4 guesses
1,141
5 guesses
188
6 guesses
18

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
32%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

HOSEN can come back 109 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

303 answers
302 answers
143 answers
136 answers
130 answers
121 answers
100 answers
89 answers
70 answers
67 answers
49 answers
47 answers
46 answers
39 answers
38 answers
35 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4O1S1E1N1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

DEALT TRAIL ARIEL SLART ACTOR GIANT

Strategy after playing HOSEN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HOSEN:

13% chance
Suggested:
DEALT
13% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
6% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.7% →
DEALT 5.55 bits
12.7% →
TRAIL 5.94 bits
6.0% →
ARIEL 4.14 bits
5.7% →
SLART 5.30 bits
5.5% →
ACTOR 4.94 bits
5.1% →
GIANT 4.99 bits
4.2% →
SLART 5.00 bits
3.7% →
CLARY 4.54 bits
2.9% →
CHART 4.74 bits
2.8% →
DIANE 4.52 bits

Research on HOSEN

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

Optimal play

Opening with HOSEN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,039 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 HOSEN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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
HOSEN 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).