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

PLEWS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of plew

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 PLEWS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PLEWS 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 79.6% of games, misses completely in 20.4%, and leaves about 215 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,149 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 PLEWS 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.

4.44 Entropy (bits)
215 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 48% of evaluated openers
1.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PLEWS 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#6,149 Rank among openers
Opening with PLEWS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.69 average. It ranks #6,149 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
53
3 guesses
847
4 guesses
1,243
5 guesses
201
6 guesses
9
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
1 vowels
Common:
ELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
22%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

PLEWS can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

485 answers
392 answers
190 answers
159 answers
127 answers
119 answers
73 answers
62 answers
47 answers
45 answers
45 answers
41 answers
40 answers
40 answers
40 answers
33 answers
32 answers
29 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3L1E1W4S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing PLEWS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PLEWS:

20% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
17% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
8% chance
Suggested:
STAIR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.4%
TRAIN 6.02 bits
16.5%
ROATE 5.32 bits
8.0%
STAIR 5.30 bits
6.7%
LILAC 4.99 bits
5.3%
REATE 4.68 bits
5.0%
STAIR 4.88 bits
3.1%
ALOFT 4.11 bits
2.6%
TRADE 4.50 bits
2.0%
RAINY 4.43 bits
1.9%
WRATH 4.54 bits

Research on PLEWS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PLEWS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,687 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,320 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 PLOOZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PLEWS 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).