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

OUZEL

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.0% of possible answers.

Open Solver with OUZEL Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈuːzəl/

Noun

A water ouzel, an aquatic perching bird (Cinclus mexicanus).

Noun

A Eurasian blackbird (Turdus merula).

Alternative forms: ousel, oozel, woosel

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 OUZEL performs as a guess

Wordle accepts OUZEL 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 83.8% of games, misses completely in 16.2%, and leaves about 189 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,310 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.

O___L O in the 1st position and L in the 5th position O__E_ O in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _U__L U in the 2nd position and L in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe OUZEL 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.

4.36 Entropy (bits)
189 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 43% of evaluated openers
1.58 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How OUZEL 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
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#12,310 Rank among openers
Opening with OUZEL 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 3.82 average. It ranks #12,310 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
702
4 guesses
1,262
5 guesses
319
6 guesses
24
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
3 vowels
Common:
ELOU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
27%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

OUZEL can come back 69 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

385 answers
349 answers
273 answers
162 answers
128 answers
126 answers
93 answers
83 answers
82 answers
79 answers
51 answers
51 answers
50 answers
42 answers
36 answers
35 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
17 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1U1Z10E1L1
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Try next

SAINT REATE SONAR STAIR STALE SNORE

Strategy after playing OUZEL

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing OUZEL:

16% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
15% chance
Suggested:
REATE
11% chance
Suggested:
SONAR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.2% →
SAINT 5.89 bits
14.7% →
REATE 5.59 bits
11.5% →
SONAR 5.09 bits
6.8% →
STAIR 4.66 bits
5.4% →
STALE 4.74 bits
5.3% →
SAINT 4.85 bits
3.9% →
SNORE 4.58 bits
3.5% →
SNARY 3.95 bits
3.5% →
SHUNT 5.02 bits
3.3% →
ALLOY 4.06 bits

Research on OUZEL

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

Optimal play

Opening with OUZEL, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,041 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 OUZEL can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82; proven optimal play reaches 3.81. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 OWZUHL. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

Synonyms MERLE

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
OUZEL 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).