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

SHOOS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 78.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SHOOS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of shoo

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 SHOOS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SHOOS 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 57.4% of games, misses completely in 42.6%, and leaves about 501 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,004 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.90 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__O_ S in the 1st position and O 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 SHOOS.

First-turn measures

All four describe SHOOS 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.

3.40 Entropy (bits)
501 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
78.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 5% of evaluated openers
2.55 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SHOOS 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.

3.90 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#14,004 Rank among openers
Opening with SHOOS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.90 average. It ranks #14,004 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
624
4 guesses
1,279
5 guesses
373
6 guesses
43
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
2 vowels
Common:
OS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
57%
Green tile
32%
All gray
43%

Feedback distribution

SHOOS can come back 62 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1012 answers
230 answers
227 answers
129 answers
118 answers
106 answers
73 answers
64 answers
44 answers
41 answers
39 answers
30 answers
29 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 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 SHOOS; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

S1H4O1O1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Try next

RAILE PLANE TALER CARTE TARSE MARLE

Strategy after playing SHOOS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SHOOS:

43% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
10% chance
Suggested:
PLANE
10% chance
Suggested:
TALER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

42.6% →
RAILE 6.23 bits
9.7% →
PLANE 5.37 bits
9.6% →
TALER 4.87 bits
5.4% →
CARTE 5.25 bits
5.0% →
TARSE 5.40 bits
4.5% →
PLANE 4.61 bits
3.1% →
MARLE 4.56 bits
2.7% →
TRICE 5.08 bits
1.9% →
CRUET 4.30 bits
1.7% →
LATER 4.19 bits

Research on SHOOS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SHOOS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.94 guesses and ranks #14,329 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.11 guesses at best and is rank #7,169 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.90, at or below the proven-optimal 3.94, 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 SHOOZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SHOOS is a kind of dispel.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SHOOS 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).