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

MISTS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /mɪsts/

Noun

plural of mist

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of mist

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 MISTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MISTS 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 68.7% of games, misses completely in 31.3%, and leaves about 319 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,729 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 MISTS 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.

3.93 Entropy (bits)
319 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 20% of evaluated openers
2.01 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MISTS 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,729 Rank among openers
Opening with MISTS left 1 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 3.76 average. It ranks #9,729 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
773
4 guesses
1,255
5 guesses
255
6 guesses
21
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
1 vowels
Common:
IST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
21%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

MISTS can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

744 answers
231 answers
227 answers
207 answers
109 answers
104 answers
96 answers
83 answers
65 answers
60 answers
59 answers
32 answers
30 answers
27 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3I1S1T1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing MISTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MISTS:

31% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
10% chance
Suggested:
PARLE
10% chance
Suggested:
CARET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.3%
CARLE 6.17 bits
9.7%
PARLE 5.57 bits
9.6%
CARET 5.53 bits
8.7%
CRANE 5.50 bits
4.6%
REAST 4.74 bits
4.4%
DROLE 4.63 bits
4.0%
BLAER 5.29 bits
3.5%
TRINE 4.75 bits
2.7%
PARLE 4.73 bits
2.5%
SPINE 4.47 bits

Research on MISTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MISTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,030 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 MISTS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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 MIHSTS.

Rhymes with LISTS FISTS CYSTS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, MISTS is a kind of fog or cover.

Synonyms CLOUD fog obscure

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MISTS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.2 of 5).

In a sentence

It is lost in the mists of time.
© tatoeba.org contributor Chrikaru (CC BY 2.0 FR)
In the morning, the mountains are shrouded in autumn mists.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).