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

SPITS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 86.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of spit

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of spit

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 SPITS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SPITS 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 67.6% of games, misses completely in 32.4%, and leaves about 318 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,461 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 SPITS 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.

4.09 Entropy (bits)
318 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 27% of evaluated openers
1.86 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SPITS 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,461 Rank among openers
Opening with SPITS 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 3.73 average. It ranks #8,461 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
846
4 guesses
1,196
5 guesses
247
6 guesses
22
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
1 vowels
Common:
IST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
32%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

SPITS can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

770 answers
227 answers
189 answers
135 answers
121 answers
120 answers
74 answers
73 answers
64 answers
62 answers
40 answers
33 answers
32 answers
27 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1P3I1T1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing SPITS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SPITS:

32% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
10% chance
Suggested:
CARET
8% chance
Suggested:
LINER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

32.4%
CARLE 6.14 bits
9.6%
CARET 5.51 bits
8.0%
LINER 5.27 bits
5.7%
CARLE 5.28 bits
5.1%
PARLE 5.46 bits
5.1%
CRANE 5.01 bits
3.1%
TRAIT 4.34 bits
3.1%
ALURE 5.03 bits
2.7%
LEANT 4.44 bits
2.6%
ALURE 4.69 bits

Research on SPITS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SPITS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,770 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 #4,549 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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 SPIHTS.

Rhymes with SHITS BLITZ BRITS FRITZ QUITS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SPITS is a kind of cape or secretion.

Synonyms tongue spitting sprinkle saliva

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SPITS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once 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 (3.2 of 5).

In a sentence

I can't put up with the way he spits.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Did you notice that Tom spits when he talks?
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (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).