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

SHAMA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SHAMA Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Copsychus malabaricus (white-rumped shama), a saxicoline songbird of India, glossy black with a white rump and brown underparts, and six other species in genus Copsychus.

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 SHAMA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SHAMA 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 69.1% of games, misses completely in 30.9%, and leaves about 315 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,406 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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.

S___A S in the 1st position and A in the 5th position S__M_ S in the 1st position and M in the 4th position _H__A H in the 2nd position and A in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe SHAMA 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.

4.05 Entropy (bits)
315 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 25% of evaluated openers
1.90 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SHAMA 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,406 Rank among openers
Opening with SHAMA 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 3.75 average. It ranks #9,406 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
789
4 guesses
1,236
5 guesses
262
6 guesses
17
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:
AS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
32%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

SHAMA can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

733 answers
333 answers
177 answers
122 answers
117 answers
111 answers
90 answers
53 answers
51 answers
48 answers
45 answers
41 answers
34 answers
32 answers
30 answers
23 answers
23 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1H4A1M3A1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

RIONE TALER TRINE DRICE RUOTE CONTE

Strategy after playing SHAMA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SHAMA:

31% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
14% chance
Suggested:
TALER
7% chance
Suggested:
TRINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

30.9% →
RIONE 6.01 bits
14.0% →
TALER 5.52 bits
7.5% →
TRINE 5.17 bits
5.1% →
DRICE 4.84 bits
4.9% →
RUOTE 5.61 bits
4.7% →
CONTE 5.13 bits
3.8% →
TOILE 5.07 bits
2.2% →
RAINE 4.37 bits
2.1% →
TRICE 4.95 bits
2.0% →
LEANT 3.88 bits

Research on SHAMA

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

Optimal play

Opening with SHAMA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,082 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 #5,188 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it SHAHMUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SHAMA sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).