SOUGH
SOUGH is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /saʊ//sʌf/
- Verb
-
To make a soft rustling or murmuring sound.
- Noun
-
A murmuring sound; rushing, rustling, or whistling sound.
- Noun
-
A gentle breeze; a waft; a breath.
- Verb
-
To drain.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English *sough, swough, swogh, from Middle English swoȝen, swowen, from Old English swōgan (“to make a sound; move with noise; rush; roar”), from Proto-West Germanic *swōgan, from Proto-Germanic *swōganą from Proto-Indo-European *sweh₂gʰ-, same source as English echo (via Ancient Greek). Cognate with Scots souch (“sough”), Icelandic súgur (“a rushing sound, rustle”). Noun replaced Middle English swei, sweȝ from Old English swēg. More at swoon.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SOWF.
Use SOUGH in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 89.7% of possible answers.
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
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.
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 SOUGH performs as a guess
Wordle accepts SOUGH 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 72.5% of games, misses completely in 27.5%, and leaves about 245 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,083 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 SOUGH 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 SOUGH 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
Feedback distribution
SOUGH can come back 95 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 SOUGH; 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 SOUGH
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SOUGH.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SOUGH:
Research on SOUGH
Game-tree analysis and word research for SOUGH, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SOUGH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,562 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,808 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- SOUGH 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).