Accepted guess Not a possible answer C tier for first-turn info

SOILS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of soil

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of soil

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 SOILS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SOILS 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 78.6% of games, misses completely in 21.4%, and leaves about 192 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,011 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe SOILS 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.

4.49 Entropy (bits)
192 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 51% of evaluated openers
1.45 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SOILS 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#7,011 Rank among openers
Opening with SOILS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #7,011 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
889
4 guesses
1,167
5 guesses
227
6 guesses
25
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
2 vowels
Common:
ILOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
41%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

SOILS can come back 82 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

507 answers
199 answers
192 answers
180 answers
153 answers
142 answers
115 answers
90 answers
64 answers
60 answers
59 answers
56 answers
38 answers
38 answers
36 answers
31 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1O1I1L1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing SOILS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SOILS:

21% chance
Suggested:
TRACE
8% chance
Suggested:
RANCE
8% chance
Suggested:
CADET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.4%
TRACE 6.26 bits
8.4%
RANCE 5.29 bits
8.1%
CADET 5.22 bits
7.6%
CRANE 5.40 bits
6.4%
RANCE 4.66 bits
6.0%
PEART 5.39 bits
4.8%
CRATE 5.10 bits
3.8%
PRATE 5.30 bits
2.7%
TIARE 4.46 bits
2.5%
PARTE 4.42 bits

Research on SOILS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SOILS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,777 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,731 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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 SOYLZ.

Rhymes with COILS BOILS FOILS TOILS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SOILS is a kind of status or ground.

Synonyms land ground territory DIRTY dirt grease

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SOILS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.2 of 5).

In a sentence

Ivy can grow in dry soils.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Ivy can grow in all types of soils.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).