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

POLED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with POLED Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Marked with poles.

Verb

simple past and past participle of pole

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 POLED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts POLED 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 83.9% of games, misses completely in 16.1%, and leaves about 147 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #782 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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___D P in the 1st position and D in the 5th position P__E_ P in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _O__D O in the 2nd position and D in the 5th position PO_ED P in the 1st position, O in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and D in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe POLED 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.

5.00 Entropy (bits)
147 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 83% of evaluated openers
0.94 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POLED 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#782 Rank among openers
Opening with POLED solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.59 average. It ranks #782 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
74
3 guesses
990
4 guesses
1,119
5 guesses
162
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
2 vowels
Common:
ELO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
35%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

POLED can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

382 answers
298 answers
157 answers
151 answers
122 answers
106 answers
100 answers
61 answers
58 answers
55 answers
55 answers
45 answers
43 answers
34 answers
34 answers
32 answers
32 answers
29 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1L1E1D2
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

SAINT STARE ARSON STAIR SLATE SHART

Strategy after playing POLED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POLED:

16% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
13% chance
Suggested:
STARE
7% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.1% →
SAINT 6.26 bits
12.6% →
STARE 5.60 bits
6.6% →
SAINT 5.20 bits
6.4% →
ARSON 5.34 bits
5.1% →
STAIR 4.73 bits
4.5% →
SLATE 4.76 bits
4.2% →
SHART 4.54 bits
2.6% →
GEARE 4.57 bits
2.4% →
STARY 5.07 bits
2.3% →
DRAIN 4.69 bits

Research on POLED

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

Optimal play

Opening with POLED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #348 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 POLED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.61, 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 POHLD. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, POLED is a kind of european or rod.

Synonyms terminal rod punt PERCH

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
POLED 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.2 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).