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

SOUSE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /saʊs/

Noun

Something kept or steeped in brine.

Noun

The act of sousing; a plunging into water.

Verb

To immerse in liquid; to steep or drench.

Verb

To steep in brine; to pickle.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

From Middle English souse (“to salt pickle”) also a noun (“liquid for pickling,” “pickled pig parts”), from Old French sous (“preserved in salt”), from Frankish *sultija (“saltwater, brine”), from Proto-Germanic *sultijō (“saltwater, brine”). Cognate with Old Saxon sultia (“saltwater”), Old High German sulza (“brine”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Related meanings

Synonyms dip alcoholic soak lush dunk plunge

Use SOUSE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.4% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SOUSE Open Word Finder

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

No completed appearance

No 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.

How SOUSE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SOUSE 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 83.8% of games, misses completely in 16.2%, and leaves about 181 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,366 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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___E S in the 1st position and E in the 5th position S__S_ S in the 1st position and S in the 4th position _O__E O in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position SO_SE S in the 1st position, O in the 2nd position, S in the 4th position, and E in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in SOUSE.

First-turn measures

All four describe SOUSE 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.

4.61 Entropy (bits)
181 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SOUSE 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.

3.82 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#12,366 Rank among openers
Opening with SOUSE left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.75 means those games clustered within about 0.75 of a guess of the 3.82 average. It ranks #12,366 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
708
4 guesses
1,227
5 guesses
324
6 guesses
37

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
EOSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
47%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

SOUSE can come back 84 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

389 answers
387 answers
174 answers
173 answers
130 answers
115 answers
109 answers
63 answers
50 answers
50 answers
50 answers
46 answers
46 answers
45 answers
36 answers
35 answers
35 answers
32 answers
29 answers
29 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1O1U1S1E1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Try next

ALTER TRAIL ADORN RAILE CLARY CURLY

Strategy after playing SOUSE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SOUSE:

16% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
16% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
7% chance
Suggested:
ADORN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.3% →
ALTER 5.36 bits
16.2% →
TRAIL 5.71 bits
7.3% →
ADORN 5.15 bits
7.3% →
RAILE 4.47 bits
5.5% →
CLARY 4.52 bits
4.8% →
CURLY 4.32 bits
4.6% →
STALK 4.72 bits
2.6% →
PATER 4.11 bits
2.1% →
BLUNT 3.85 bits
2.1% →
MOWER 3.03 bits

Research on SOUSE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SOUSE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,876 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 SOUSE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82; proven optimal play reaches 3.80. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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
SOUSE 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).