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

SHIVS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 80.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SHIVS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of shiv

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of shiv

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 SHIVS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SHIVS 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 60.1% of games, misses completely in 39.9%, and leaves about 453 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,299 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.86 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___S S in the 1st position and S in the 5th position S__V_ S in the 1st position and V in the 4th position _H__S H in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe SHIVS 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.

3.48 Entropy (bits)
453 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
80.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 7% of evaluated openers
2.46 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SHIVS 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.

3.86 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,299 Rank among openers
Opening with SHIVS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.86 average. It ranks #13,299 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
676
4 guesses
1,263
5 guesses
353
6 guesses
28
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
1 vowels
Common:
IS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
60%
Green tile
30%
All gray
40%

Feedback distribution

SHIVS can come back 57 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

947 answers
250 answers
210 answers
149 answers
139 answers
116 answers
52 answers
50 answers
47 answers
42 answers
38 answers
36 answers
30 answers
29 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
20 answers
18 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1H4I1V4S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

ROATE LINER PEART GRATE CARTE TRACE

Strategy after playing SHIVS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SHIVS:

40% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
11% chance
Suggested:
LINER
9% chance
Suggested:
PEART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

39.9% →
ROATE 5.95 bits
10.5% →
LINER 5.19 bits
8.8% →
PEART 5.38 bits
6.3% →
GRATE 4.98 bits
5.9% →
CARTE 5.34 bits
4.9% →
ROATE 5.43 bits
2.2% →
TRACE 4.93 bits
2.1% →
VALOR 4.98 bits
2.0% →
PLANE 4.09 bits
1.8% →
LATER 4.14 bits

Research on SHIVS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SHIVS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.91 guesses and ranks #13,936 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.06 guesses at best and is rank #6,832 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.86, at or below the proven-optimal 3.91, 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 SHIHVZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SHIVS is a kind of knife.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SHIVS 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).