SLUSH
Yes, SLUSH was the Wordle answer on August 1, 2026 (Wordle #1869).
As an opener, it rules out about 85.9% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /slʌʃ/
- Noun
-
Half-melted snow or ice, generally located on the ground.
“As the skiing season drew to an end, there was nothing but slush left on the piste.”
- Noun
-
Liquid mud or mire.
- Verb
-
To smear with slushy liquid or grease.
- Verb
-
To slosh or splash; to move as, or through, a slushy or liquid substance.
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: August 1, 2026 (#1869).
See the full page for that puzzle: August 1, 2026 (#1869).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How SLUSH performs as a guess
SLUSH is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 67.0% of games, misses completely in 33.0%, and leaves about 335 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,957 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe SLUSH 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How SLUSH 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches SLUSH in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SLUSH can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for SLUSH; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing SLUSH
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SLUSH.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SLUSH:
Research on SLUSH
Game-tree analysis and word research for SLUSH, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SLUSH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #11,787 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.96 guesses at best and is rank #5,532 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, SLUSH is a kind of water or go.
Synonyms splash
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- SLUSH sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 69 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
In a sentence
The governor took the money out of a slush fund.
Here in Quebec, when spring arrives, the melting snow creates lots of slush.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).