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

SHISH

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ʃɪʃ/

Interjection

Used to request quiet; similar to shh.

Verb

To be quiet; to keep quiet.

“He wouldn’t shish, so I kicked him.”

Adjective

On a skewer.

Noun

The spine of a shish kebab structure.

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

Etymology

Phonetic alteration of shush.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

In a sentence

Can you put the shish kebabs on the grill?
© tatoeba.org contributor mccarras (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Let's order twenty shish kebabs!
© tatoeba.org contributor FeuDRenais (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use SHISH in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 78.1% 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.

How SHISH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SHISH 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 56.9% of games, misses completely in 43.1%, and leaves about 522 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,315 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 SHISH 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.

3.26 Entropy (bits)
522 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
78.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SHISH 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#14,315 Rank among openers
Opening with SHISH 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 3.93 average. It ranks #14,315 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
32
3 guesses
588
4 guesses
1,283
5 guesses
412
6 guesses
38

Composition

3/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
IS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
57%
Green tile
37%
All gray
43%

Feedback distribution

SHISH can come back 54 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1028 answers
287 answers
224 answers
161 answers
82 answers
71 answers
60 answers
57 answers
52 answers
47 answers
44 answers
30 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1H4I1S1H4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SHISH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SHISH:

43% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
12% chance
Suggested:
LINER
9% chance
Suggested:
PEART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

43.1% →
ROATE 5.96 bits
12.0% →
LINER 5.20 bits
9.4% →
PEART 5.39 bits
6.8% →
CRANE 4.87 bits
3.4% →
RUOTE 4.71 bits
3.0% →
LAREE 4.76 bits
2.5% →
OATER 5.03 bits
2.4% →
OATER 4.77 bits
2.2% →
TRACE 4.93 bits
2.0% →
PLANE 4.09 bits

Research on SHISH

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

Optimal play

Opening with SHISH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.97 guesses and ranks #14,541 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.15 guesses at best and is rank #7,293 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.93, at or below the proven-optimal 3.97, 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
SHISH 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).