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

PLASH

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /plæʃ/

Noun

A small pool of standing water; a marshy pond; also, a puddle; (uncountable) marshy land; mire.

Noun

A sound made by something hitting the surface of water or some other liquid, or by water or some other liquid hitting something; also, an act causing this sound; a splash.

Verb

To hit (someone or something) with water or some other liquid, causing a splashing sound; to splash.

Verb

To hit the surface of water or some other liquid, causing a splashing sound; also, to move in water with a splashing sound; to splash.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

The verb is derived from Late Middle English *plashen (attested by the present participle form plashynge), from Anglo-Norman plaissier, plaisser, Old French plaissier, plaisser, and Old French plaissier (“to bend; to interlace”) (modern French plaisser (regional)), from Late Latin *plaxus, a variant of Latin plexus, the perfect passive participle of plectō (“to braid, plait, weave; to bend; to turn; to twist”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pleḱ- (“to fold; to plait, weave”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Related meanings

Synonyms splash

Use PLASH in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.6% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No 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.

How PLASH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PLASH 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 79.0% of games, misses completely in 21.0%, and leaves about 177 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #884 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 PLASH 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.

4.88 Entropy (bits)
177 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PLASH 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#884 Rank among openers
Opening with PLASH solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #884 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
1,012
4 guesses
1,114
5 guesses
159
6 guesses
10

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ALS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
33%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

PLASH can come back 113 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

500 answers
259 answers
161 answers
144 answers
112 answers
89 answers
76 answers
72 answers
59 answers
57 answers
53 answers
52 answers
46 answers
43 answers
37 answers
34 answers
30 answers
29 answers
26 answers
26 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3L1A1S1H4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing PLASH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PLASH:

21% chance
Suggested:
TONER
11% chance
Suggested:
TONER
7% chance
Suggested:
LIBEL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.0% →
TONER 6.13 bits
10.9% →
TONER 5.48 bits
6.8% →
LIBEL 5.09 bits
6.0% →
RONTE 5.43 bits
4.7% →
RATEL 4.62 bits
3.7% →
DRICE 4.78 bits
3.2% →
TRICE 5.36 bits
3.0% →
CONTE 4.56 bits
2.5% →
RUOTE 5.01 bits
2.4% →
RUOTE 4.48 bits

Research on PLASH

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

Optimal play

Opening with PLASH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,092 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.76 guesses at best and is rank #502 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PLASH 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).