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

POSSE

Yes, POSSE was the Wordle answer on January 4, 2026 (Wordle #1660).

As an opener, it rules out about 91.4% of possible answers.

Open Solver with POSSE Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpɒs.i//ˈpɑs.i/

Noun

A group or company of people, originally especially one having hostile intent; a throng, a crowd.

Noun

A search party.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: January 4, 2026 (#1660).

See the full page for that puzzle: January 4, 2026 (#1660).

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

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How POSSE performs as a guess

POSSE is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 80.6% of games, misses completely in 19.4%, and leaves about 205 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,745 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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

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

First-turn measures

All four describe POSSE 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.

4.48 Entropy (bits)
205 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
91.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 50% of evaluated openers
1.47 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POSSE 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.

3.78 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#10,745 Rank among openers
Opening with POSSE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.78 average. It ranks #10,745 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
746
4 guesses
1,235
5 guesses
290
6 guesses
24
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:
EOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
39%
All gray
19%

Example solver route

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

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches POSSE in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

POSSE can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

461 answers
372 answers
196 answers
184 answers
147 answers
131 answers
54 answers
47 answers
46 answers
45 answers
43 answers
42 answers
41 answers
39 answers
34 answers
32 answers
30 answers
27 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1S1S1E1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

TRAIL ALTER LAIRY ADORN CLARY SLANT

Strategy after playing POSSE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POSSE:

19% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
16% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
8% chance
Suggested:
LAIRY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.4% →
TRAIL 5.93 bits
15.7% →
ALTER 5.38 bits
8.3% →
LAIRY 4.52 bits
7.8% →
ADORN 5.11 bits
6.2% →
CLARY 4.50 bits
5.5% →
SLANT 4.88 bits
2.3% →
STEER 4.40 bits
2.0% →
LEANT 3.64 bits
1.9% →
MOWER 3.09 bits
1.9% →
LAIRY 4.76 bits

Research on POSSE

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

Optimal play

Opening with POSSE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #8,955 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,286 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78; proven optimal play reaches 3.77. 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it PAHSEE.

Rhymes with QUASI

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, POSSE is a kind of law.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
POSSE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times 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 (3.3 of 5).

In a sentence

He led the posse through the mountains.
© tatoeba.org contributor Igider (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The sheriff gathered the posse together.
© tatoeba.org contributor Igider (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).