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

PSOAS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈsəʊ.əs//ˈsoʊ.əs//ˈsoʊ.æs/

Noun

Either of two muscles, the psoas major and psoas minor, involved in flexion of the trunk.

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

Etymology

From Ancient Greek ψόας (psóas, “of the muscle of the loins”), genitive singular of ψόα (psóa).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

In a sentence

The psoas is hard to reach with palpation.
© tatoeba.org contributor mccarras (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use PSOAS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.3% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

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

How PSOAS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PSOAS 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 77.1% of games, misses completely in 22.9%, and leaves about 254 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,047 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.81 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 PSOAS 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)
254 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PSOAS 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.

3.81 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#12,047 Rank among openers
Opening with PSOAS left 1 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 3.81 average. It ranks #12,047 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
737
4 guesses
1,234
5 guesses
310
6 guesses
32

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
24%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

PSOAS can come back 73 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

545 answers
398 answers
246 answers
180 answers
129 answers
102 answers
87 answers
71 answers
61 answers
52 answers
51 answers
46 answers
37 answers
34 answers
30 answers
28 answers
23 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3S1O1A1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing PSOAS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PSOAS:

23% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
17% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
10% chance
Suggested:
RONTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.9% →
TRINE 6.03 bits
16.7% →
CARLE 5.38 bits
10.3% →
RONTE 5.30 bits
7.6% →
TRINE 5.44 bits
5.4% →
THALE 4.92 bits
4.3% →
CRINE 4.48 bits
3.6% →
RATEL 4.61 bits
3.0% →
MANOR 4.47 bits
2.6% →
CRUET 3.98 bits
2.2% →
CLINE 4.74 bits

Research on PSOAS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PSOAS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,567 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,131 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.81, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PSOAS 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).