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

SMEES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 84.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SMEES Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of smee

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 SMEES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SMEES 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 67.4% of games, misses completely in 32.6%, and leaves about 356 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,900 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.89 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.

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__E_ S in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _M__S M in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Try next

TRAIL ROATE RAINY MOLAR TRASH PARTE
Words starting with S Words ending with S

First-turn measures

All four describe SMEES 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.

3.73 Entropy (bits)
356 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 13% of evaluated openers
2.22 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SMEES 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.

3.89 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,900 Rank among openers
Opening with SMEES left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.89 average. It ranks #13,900 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
608
4 guesses
1,307
5 guesses
367
6 guesses
31
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.45 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

3/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
67%
Green tile
35%
All gray
33%

Feedback distribution

SMEES can come back 61 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

769 answers
362 answers
193 answers
175 answers
143 answers
93 answers
65 answers
60 answers
57 answers
47 answers
36 answers
34 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SMEES:

33% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
15% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
8% chance
Suggested:
RAINY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

32.6% →
TRAIL 5.89 bits
15.3% →
ROATE 5.21 bits
8.2% →
RAINY 4.66 bits
7.4% →
RAINY 4.33 bits
6.1% →
MOLAR 4.94 bits
3.9% →
TRASH 4.90 bits
2.8% →
PARTE 4.00 bits
2.5% →
TREAD 4.61 bits
2.4% →
PARLE 4.31 bits
2.0% →
TIARE 4.44 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1M3E1E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

The science of SMEES

What game-tree analysis and word research measure about SMEES — each figure with what it means.

Optimal play

Opening with SMEES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.89 guesses — rank #13,595 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 SMEES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.89; proven optimal play reaches 3.89 — the gap is the price of a fixed strategy.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers) — not the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

One syllable — say it SMEEZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.