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

SHAHS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 81.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of shah

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 SHAHS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SHAHS 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 64.1% of games, misses completely in 35.9%, and leaves about 437 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,328 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.93 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 SHAHS 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.

3.37 Entropy (bits)
437 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 5% of evaluated openers
2.58 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SHAHS 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.

3.93 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#14,328 Rank among openers
Opening with SHAHS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.75 means those games clustered within about 0.75 of a guess of the 3.93 average. It ranks #14,328 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
31
3 guesses
610
4 guesses
1,238
5 guesses
433
6 guesses
40
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

3/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
64%
Green tile
31%
All gray
36%

Feedback distribution

SHAHS can come back 52 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

853 answers
457 answers
195 answers
160 answers
109 answers
100 answers
57 answers
56 answers
49 answers
45 answers
34 answers
33 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1H4A1H4S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SHAHS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SHAHS:

36% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
19% chance
Suggested:
TALER
8% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

35.9%
RIONE 5.98 bits
19.3%
TALER 5.44 bits
8.2%
TRINE 5.11 bits
6.7%
TRINE 4.93 bits
4.6%
CONTE 5.01 bits
4.2%
RUOTE 5.47 bits
2.4%
TRICE 4.99 bits
2.4%
TRICE 3.87 bits
2.1%
TALER 4.23 bits
1.9%
TRIPE 4.50 bits

Research on SHAHS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SHAHS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.96 guesses and ranks #14,523 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with SHAHS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.93, at or below the proven-optimal 3.96, 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 SHAHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SHAHS is a kind of sovereign.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SHAHS 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).