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

SHASH

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

As an opener, it rules out about 81.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ʃæʃ/

Noun

The scarf of a turban.

Noun

A sash.

Verb

To produce white noise.

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 SHASH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SHASH 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 433 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,234 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.92 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 SHASH 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.

3.44 Entropy (bits)
433 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 6% of evaluated openers
2.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SHASH 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.

3.92 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#14,234 Rank among openers
Opening with SHASH 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 3.92 average. It ranks #14,234 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
29
3 guesses
634
4 guesses
1,223
5 guesses
427
6 guesses
39
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
37%
All gray
36%

Feedback distribution

SHASH can come back 55 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
76 answers
60 answers
57 answers
56 answers
53 answers
49 answers
48 answers
33 answers
29 answers
28 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1H4A1S1H4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SHASH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SHASH:

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
3.2%
RUOTE 4.55 bits
2.5%
RUOTE 4.86 bits
2.4%
TRICE 4.99 bits
2.4%
TRICE 3.87 bits
2.2%
RUOTE 4.68 bits
2.1%
TALER 4.23 bits

Research on SHASH

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

Optimal play

Opening with SHASH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.96 guesses and ranks #14,477 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.16 guesses at best and is rank #7,316 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.92, 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 SHASH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

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