Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

POUCH

POUCH is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 87.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /paʊt͡ʃ/

Noun

A small bag usually closed with a drawstring.

Noun

An organic pocket in which a marsupial carries its young.

Verb

To enclose within a pouch.

“The beggar pouched the coin.”

Verb

To transport within a pouch, especially a diplomatic pouch.

“We pouched the encryption device to our embassy in Beijing.”

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

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 POUCH performs as a guess

POUCH 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 69.0% of games, misses completely in 31.0%, and leaves about 290 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,567 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 POUCH 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.

4.33 Entropy (bits)
290 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
87.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 40% of evaluated openers
1.62 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How POUCH 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,567 Rank among openers
Opening with POUCH left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,567 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
884
4 guesses
1,188
5 guesses
209
6 guesses
16
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:
OU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
30%
All gray
31%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S C O L D
C Y N I C
P O U C H

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches POUCH in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

POUCH can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

737 answers
214 answers
157 answers
150 answers
105 answers
103 answers
92 answers
67 answers
65 answers
48 answers
41 answers
39 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3O1U1C3H4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing POUCH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing POUCH:

31% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
9% chance
Suggested:
ADORN
7% chance
Suggested:
SNARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.0%
RAILE 6.17 bits
9.0%
ADORN 5.27 bits
6.6%
SNARE 5.09 bits
6.3%
TALER 4.66 bits
4.4%
TARSE 5.60 bits
4.3%
CANER 5.22 bits
3.9%
SLIER 5.35 bits
2.8%
SLANT 4.86 bits
2.7%
IRATE 4.94 bits
2.0%
LEAST 4.61 bits

Research on POUCH

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

Optimal play

Opening with POUCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,380 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,806 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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 POWCH.

Rhymes with COUCH VOUCH

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, POUCH is a kind of bag or cavity.

Synonyms pocket sack sac BULGE

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
POUCH sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

Santiago put the money in his pouch.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The papers arrived at the embassy in the diplomatic pouch.
© tatoeba.org contributor Tangobango (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).