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

ISHES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of ish

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 ISHES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ISHES 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 80.0% of games, misses completely in 20.0%, and leaves about 231 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,378 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.86 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 ISHES 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.

3.99 Entropy (bits)
231 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 22% of evaluated openers
1.95 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ISHES 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.

3.86 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,378 Rank among openers
Opening with ISHES left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.86 average. It ranks #13,378 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
642
4 guesses
1,296
5 guesses
342
6 guesses
30
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
17%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

ISHES can come back 59 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

475 answers
357 answers
255 answers
191 answers
173 answers
125 answers
120 answers
109 answers
80 answers
59 answers
51 answers
51 answers
50 answers
35 answers
31 answers
27 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

I1S1H4E1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing ISHES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ISHES:

20% chance
Suggested:
TALON
15% chance
Suggested:
LEARE
11% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.0%
TALON 5.78 bits
15.0%
LEARE 5.48 bits
10.7%
TRAIN 5.25 bits
8.0%
OATER 4.25 bits
7.3%
SLANT 5.10 bits
5.3%
SLART 5.02 bits
5.1%
TORCH 5.25 bits
4.6%
TRINE 4.43 bits
3.4%
STINK 4.50 bits
2.5%
REATE 4.86 bits

Research on ISHES

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

Optimal play

Opening with ISHES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,295 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 ISHES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.86, at or below the proven-optimal 3.87, 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 IHSHIHZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.