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

SHOED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SHOED Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

Alternative form of shod (“wearing shoes”).

Verb

simple past and past participle of shoe

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 SHOED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SHOED 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 85.3% of games, misses completely in 14.7%, and leaves about 137 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,057 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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___D S in the 1st position and D in the 5th position S__E_ S in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _H__D H in the 2nd position and D in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe SHOED 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.

5.01 Entropy (bits)
137 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 84% of evaluated openers
0.94 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SHOED 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#4,057 Rank among openers
Opening with SHOED solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.65 average. It ranks #4,057 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
902
4 guesses
1,200
5 guesses
176
6 guesses
16
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
41%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

SHOED can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

350 answers
295 answers
169 answers
153 answers
122 answers
74 answers
72 answers
72 answers
69 answers
68 answers
58 answers
55 answers
44 answers
42 answers
40 answers
36 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
24 answers
24 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1H4O1E1D2
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

TRAIL LEARE TALON LATER SLANT CLARY

Strategy after playing SHOED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SHOED:

15% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
12% chance
Suggested:
LEARE
7% chance
Suggested:
TALON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.7% →
TRAIL 5.85 bits
12.4% →
LEARE 5.50 bits
7.1% →
TALON 5.16 bits
6.4% →
LATER 4.52 bits
5.1% →
SLANT 4.67 bits
3.1% →
CLARY 4.24 bits
3.0% →
GEARE 4.57 bits
3.0% →
SAIST 4.78 bits
2.9% →
PLATE 4.61 bits
2.9% →
MIRTH 4.36 bits

Research on SHOED

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

Optimal play

Opening with SHOED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,203 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 SHOED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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 SHOHD. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

Synonyms booted

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SHOED 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.4 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).