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

LOAMS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of loam

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of loam

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 LOAMS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LOAMS 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 83.9% of games, misses completely in 16.1%, and leaves about 139 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,688 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 LOAMS 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.

4.93 Entropy (bits)
139 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 80% of evaluated openers
1.02 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LOAMS 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#1,688 Rank among openers
Opening with LOAMS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.61 average. It ranks #1,688 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
969
4 guesses
1,136
5 guesses
170
6 guesses
11
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:
ALOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
30%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

LOAMS can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

383 answers
203 answers
176 answers
150 answers
132 answers
120 answers
107 answers
102 answers
71 answers
66 answers
65 answers
57 answers
46 answers
44 answers
44 answers
42 answers
38 answers
34 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1O1A1M3S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing LOAMS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LOAMS:

16% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
9% chance
Suggested:
CARET
7% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.1%
TRINE 6.16 bits
8.6%
CARET 5.43 bits
7.4%
TRINE 5.58 bits
6.3%
TRICE 4.99 bits
5.6%
TRINE 5.32 bits
5.1%
TRUCE 4.70 bits
4.5%
DRICE 5.03 bits
4.3%
PETAL 4.39 bits
3.0%
SATER 4.66 bits
2.8%
STURE 4.08 bits

Research on LOAMS

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

Optimal play

Opening with LOAMS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,855 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #884 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, 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 LOHMZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, LOAMS is a kind of soil.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
LOAMS 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).