5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess B tier for first-turn info

POISE

Yes, POISE was the Wordle answer on December 24, 2022 (Wordle #553).

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /pɔɪz/

Noun

A state of balance, equilibrium or stability.

Noun

Composure; freedom from embarrassment or affectation.

Verb

To hold (something) in equilibrium, to hold balanced and ready; to carry (something) ready to be used.

“I poised the crowbar in my hand, and waited.”

Verb

To keep (something) in equilibrium; to hold suspended or balanced.

“The rock was poised precariously on the edge of the cliff.”

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

Etymology

From Middle English poys, poyse, from Anglo-Norman pois, Middle French pois (“weight”) and Anglo-Norman poise, Middle French poise (“measure of weight”), from Latin pendere (“to weigh, ponder, think”). Doublet of peise.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it POYZ.

Rhymes with NOISE NOYES PLOYS

Related meanings

Synonyms cool balance BRACE

In a sentence

He has a lot of poise.
© tatoeba.org contributor _undertoad (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Tom has a lot of poise.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use POISE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with POISE Open Word Finder

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: December 24, 2022 (#553).

See the full page for that puzzle: December 24, 2022 (#553).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

Wordle Observatory · optional

Played this Wordle?

Add your result to the public totals · about 20 seconds

Add your result and a quick difficulty rating to help explain how this puzzle played.

See the public data

The Observatory retains the selected puzzle, result, rating, optional Hard Mode answer and a random one-puzzle receipt. It stores no answer word, grid, guesses, account, email, IP-derived ID or reusable player identifier.

How verification and withdrawal work

The answer word and timezone are used transiently to verify this page, then discarded. The receipt prevents duplicate submissions and lets this browser withdraw later; anyone with that token can withdraw, so keep browser-data exports private. Read the full privacy details.

How POISE performs as a guess

POISE is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 90.1% of games, misses completely in 9.9%, and leaves about 108 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,945 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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.

P___E P in the 1st position and E in the 5th position P__S_ P in the 1st position and S in the 4th position _O__E O in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position PO_SE P in the 1st position, O in the 2nd position, S in the 4th position, and E in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe POISE 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.

5.33 Entropy (bits)
108 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
95.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POISE 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#2,945 Rank among openers
Opening with POISE solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #2,945 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
84
3 guesses
913
4 guesses
1,143
5 guesses
198
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
EIOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
90%
Green tile
44%
All gray
10%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L U M P
P O I S E

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches POISE in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

POISE can come back 123 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

283 answers
237 answers
145 answers
141 answers
130 answers
128 answers
100 answers
84 answers
63 answers
57 answers
47 answers
43 answers
42 answers
40 answers
39 answers
37 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
29 answers
29 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1I1S1E1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

ALTER TRULY ACTOR TRAIN CLARY STALK

Strategy after playing POISE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POISE:

12% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
10% chance
Suggested:
TRULY
6% chance
Suggested:
ACTOR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.9% →
ALTER 5.47 bits
9.9% →
TRULY 5.47 bits
6.1% →
ACTOR 5.01 bits
5.9% →
TRAIN 4.94 bits
5.5% →
CLARY 4.54 bits
5.4% →
CLARY 4.52 bits
4.2% →
STALK 4.91 bits
3.5% →
CLARY 4.71 bits
2.6% →
DINER 4.56 bits
2.4% →
STEER 4.66 bits

Research on POISE

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

Optimal play

Opening with POISE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #774 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #907 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64; proven optimal play reaches 3.63. 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
POISE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.1 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).