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

LOACH

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈləʊt͡ʃ/

Noun

A bottom-feeding freshwater fish in the superfamily or suborder Cobitoidea.

Noun

Synonym of LOH (light observation helicopter)

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 LOACH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LOACH 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 82.0% of games, misses completely in 18.0%, and leaves about 152 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,249 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 LOACH 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.

4.96 Entropy (bits)
152 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 81% of evaluated openers
0.99 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LOACH 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,249 Rank among openers
Opening with LOACH left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #1,249 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
1,025
4 guesses
1,064
5 guesses
190
6 guesses
13
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:
ALO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
33%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

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

428 answers
234 answers
166 answers
157 answers
125 answers
116 answers
113 answers
69 answers
61 answers
57 answers
55 answers
45 answers
42 answers
33 answers
29 answers
26 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1O1A1C3H4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing LOACH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LOACH:

18% chance
Suggested:
SIREN
10% chance
Suggested:
TASER
7% chance
Suggested:
STILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.0%
SIREN 6.10 bits
9.9%
TASER 5.42 bits
7.0%
STILE 5.25 bits
6.6%
TRINE 5.48 bits
5.3%
SIRED 4.57 bits
4.9%
PALET 4.53 bits
4.8%
STIRE 5.06 bits
2.9%
STIRE 5.36 bits
2.6%
BARON 4.66 bits
2.4%
STIRE 4.33 bits

Research on LOACH

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

Optimal play

Opening with LOACH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,829 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 LOACH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, 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 LOHCH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
LOACH 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.

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).