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

HOSER

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈhəʊ̯zə/[ˈhəʊ̯zə]/ˈhɵʊ̯zə/

Noun

One who operates a hose, e.g. a fire hose or a garden hose.

Noun

One that hoses, i.e. hurts someone badly.

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

Etymology

From hose + -er. The Canadian senses originally derive from hose (“to siphon gasoline from automobile gas tanks”), in reference to farmers who siphoned gas from farming vehicles; they were later reinforced by use to describe the players on the losing side of a game of shinny or hockey, who were required to hose down the rink to return it to a smooth state, and ultimately popularized in the 1980s by a sketch on the television show Second City Television, in which Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas play…

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

In a sentence

Tom is a total hoser.
© tatoeba.org contributor Eccles17 (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use HOSER in a puzzle

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

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 HOSER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HOSER 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 87.9% of games, misses completely in 12.1%, and leaves about 109 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,054 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe HOSER 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.

5.26 Entropy (bits)
109 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HOSER 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
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#3,054 Rank among openers
Opening with HOSER solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #3,054 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
87
3 guesses
920
4 guesses
1,123
5 guesses
206
6 guesses
18

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
31%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

HOSER can come back 118 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

288 answers
235 answers
140 answers
140 answers
129 answers
94 answers
91 answers
90 answers
90 answers
72 answers
68 answers
68 answers
49 answers
46 answers
43 answers
37 answers
37 answers
31 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4O1S1E1R1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing HOSER

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HOSER:

12% chance
Suggested:
PLAIT
10% chance
Suggested:
DEALT
6% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.1% →
PLAIT 5.62 bits
9.9% →
DEALT 5.54 bits
5.9% →
TRAIN 5.08 bits
5.9% →
TRACE 4.66 bits
5.4% →
SLANT 5.31 bits
3.9% →
TALON 5.04 bits
3.8% →
MOLDY 4.17 bits
3.8% →
LEANT 3.40 bits
3.8% →
SLANT 4.93 bits
3.0% →
LEANT 4.43 bits

Research on HOSER

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

Optimal play

Opening with HOSER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,784 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 HOSER 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HOSER 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).