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

SOWCE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Obsolete form of souse.

Verb

Obsolete form of souse.

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 SOWCE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SOWCE 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 84.5% of games, misses completely in 15.5%, and leaves about 151 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,880 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 SOWCE 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.

4.88 Entropy (bits)
151 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 77% of evaluated openers
1.06 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SOWCE 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,880 Rank among openers
Opening with SOWCE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,880 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
864
4 guesses
1,192
5 guesses
216
6 guesses
16
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
45%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

SOWCE can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

366 answers
322 answers
170 answers
155 answers
125 answers
106 answers
86 answers
81 answers
54 answers
52 answers
48 answers
47 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
34 answers
34 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SOWCE:

16% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
14% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
7% chance
Suggested:
RAILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.5%
TRAIL 5.92 bits
13.6%
ALTER 5.39 bits
7.2%
RAILE 4.51 bits
6.6%
ABORT 5.13 bits
5.3%
SLANT 4.72 bits
4.5%
LAIRY 4.11 bits
3.6%
CAIRN 5.15 bits
3.4%
ARTSY 4.63 bits
2.3%
PATER 4.21 bits
2.2%
TUILE 3.90 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1O1W4C3E1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

The science of SOWCE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SOWCE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses — rank #3,983 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best — rank #2,264 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68 — at or below the proven-optimal 3.69 only 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) — not the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

One syllable — say it SOHS. 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.