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

SALTS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of salt

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of salt

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Yiddish זאַלץ (zalts, “salt”), a Jewish Ashkenazi metonymic occupational surname for a salt producer or seller.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it SAWLTS.

Rhymes with WALTZ HALTS MALTS

Related meanings

Synonyms SHARP

Opposites dull

In a sentence

Do you use bath salts?
© tatoeba.org contributor NurseMeeks (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Bath salts would be nice.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use SALTS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% 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.

SALTS in Connections

1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.

How SALTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SALTS 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 78.6% of games, misses completely in 21.4%, and leaves about 188 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,014 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 SALTS 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.

4.60 Entropy (bits)
188 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SALTS 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,014 Rank among openers
Opening with SALTS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #5,014 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
903
4 guesses
1,184
5 guesses
199
6 guesses
15

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ALST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
37%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

SALTS can come back 89 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

511 answers
195 answers
195 answers
182 answers
130 answers
120 answers
115 answers
67 answers
61 answers
60 answers
55 answers
51 answers
49 answers
49 answers
39 answers
37 answers
36 answers
33 answers
32 answers
26 answers
24 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1A1L1T1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing SALTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SALTS:

21% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
8% chance
Suggested:
NOIRE
8% chance
Suggested:
CRANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.4% →
RIONE 6.14 bits
8.2% →
NOIRE 5.07 bits
8.2% →
CRANE 5.54 bits
7.6% →
ROUET 5.51 bits
5.5% →
MORNE 4.82 bits
5.0% →
CRANE 4.56 bits
4.8% →
PRONE 5.09 bits
2.8% →
POIRE 4.93 bits
2.6% →
TRACE 4.74 bits
2.5% →
RIONE 4.54 bits

Research on SALTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SALTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,562 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.86 guesses at best and is rank #3,121 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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
SALTS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with taste (4.5 of 5).

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).