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

POLOS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.6% of possible answers.

Open Solver with POLOS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of polo

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 POLOS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts POLOS 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 70.8% of games, misses completely in 29.2%, and leaves about 295 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,460 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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___S P in the 1st position and S in the 5th position P__O_ P in the 1st position and O in the 4th position _O__S O in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position PO_OS P in the 1st position, O in the 2nd position, O in the 4th position, and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe POLOS 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.

4.09 Entropy (bits)
295 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 27% of evaluated openers
1.85 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POLOS 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,460 Rank among openers
Opening with POLOS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,460 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
818
4 guesses
1,214
5 guesses
251
6 guesses
17
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
LOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
27%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

POLOS can come back 83 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

694 answers
276 answers
276 answers
127 answers
124 answers
71 answers
61 answers
60 answers
59 answers
59 answers
57 answers
49 answers
46 answers
44 answers
28 answers
28 answers
24 answers
20 answers
19 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1L1O1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

TIARE RAINE RANCE CRANE THALE SPARE

Strategy after playing POLOS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POLOS:

29% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
12% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
12% chance
Suggested:
RAINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.2% →
TIARE 6.30 bits
11.6% →
TIARE 5.69 bits
11.6% →
RAINE 5.41 bits
5.3% →
RANCE 4.80 bits
5.2% →
CRANE 5.50 bits
3.0% →
THALE 4.80 bits
2.6% →
TIARE 5.10 bits
2.5% →
SPARE 4.75 bits
2.5% →
BAILE 4.67 bits
2.5% →
NAICE 4.90 bits

Research on POLOS

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

Optimal play

Opening with POLOS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,387 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,495 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it POHLOHZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
POLOS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.7 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).