OUZEL
OUZEL is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
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.
Etymology
From Middle English osel, from Old English ōsle, from Proto-West Germanic *ą̄slā, *amslā, from Proto-Germanic *amslǭ. Cognate with German Amsel.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
Related meanings
Synonyms MERLE
Use OUZEL in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 92.0% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →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 190 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
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.
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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Feedback distribution
OUZEL can come back 69 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for OUZEL; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
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:
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.
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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).