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

NISUS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.1% of possible answers.

Open Solver with NISUS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A mental or physical effort to attain a specific goal; a striving.

Noun

The periodic procreative desire manifested in the spring by birds, etc.

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 NISUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NISUS 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 69.8% of games, misses completely in 30.2%, and leaves about 307 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,201 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

N___S N in the 1st position and S in the 5th position N__U_ N in the 1st position and U in the 4th position _I__S I in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in NISUS.

First-turn measures

All four describe NISUS 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.

3.88 Entropy (bits)
307 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 18% of evaluated openers
2.07 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NISUS 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.

3.82 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#12,201 Rank among openers
Opening with NISUS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.82 average. It ranks #12,201 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
723
4 guesses
1,255
5 guesses
301
6 guesses
34
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:
INSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
17%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

NISUS can come back 64 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

716 answers
244 answers
202 answers
196 answers
174 answers
125 answers
95 answers
71 answers
61 answers
57 answers
49 answers
41 answers
38 answers
32 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1I1S1U1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Try next

CARLE STALE OATER TRACE ROULE LATER

Strategy after playing NISUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NISUS:

30% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
10% chance
Suggested:
STALE
9% chance
Suggested:
OATER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

30.2% →
CARLE 6.17 bits
10.3% →
STALE 5.68 bits
8.5% →
OATER 5.21 bits
8.3% →
TRACE 5.57 bits
7.3% →
ROULE 4.88 bits
5.3% →
LATER 4.68 bits
4.0% →
TARGE 4.67 bits
3.0% →
PEART 4.58 bits
2.6% →
TRUCE 4.02 bits
2.4% →
PARLE 4.51 bits

Research on NISUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with NISUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.85 guesses and ranks #12,683 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.00 guesses at best and is rank #6,271 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, at or below the proven-optimal 3.85, 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 NEESUHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, NISUS is a kind of try.

Synonyms strain PAINS striving

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NISUS 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).