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

STEWS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of stew

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of stew

Noun

A brothel.

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 STEWS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts STEWS 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 75.3% of games, misses completely in 24.7%, and leaves about 300 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,498 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.83 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 STEWS 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.

3.88 Entropy (bits)
300 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 18% of evaluated openers
2.07 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How STEWS 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.

3.83 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#12,498 Rank among openers
Opening with STEWS left 1 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 3.83 average. It ranks #12,498 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
29
3 guesses
706
4 guesses
1,286
5 guesses
311
6 guesses
21
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:
EST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
24%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

STEWS can come back 59 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

587 answers
488 answers
251 answers
153 answers
120 answers
69 answers
68 answers
59 answers
57 answers
45 answers
45 answers
41 answers
41 answers
35 answers
32 answers
26 answers
25 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1T1E1W4S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing STEWS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing STEWS:

25% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
21% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
11% chance
Suggested:
TAROT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.7%
CAROL 5.93 bits
20.6%
RAILE 5.43 bits
10.6%
TAROT 5.31 bits
6.4%
LEARE 4.83 bits
5.1%
COALY 4.89 bits
2.9%
CREED 4.43 bits
2.9%
PAIRE 4.34 bits
2.5%
ROULE 4.59 bits
2.4%
BRASH 4.43 bits
1.9%
WORDY 4.51 bits

Research on STEWS

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

Optimal play

Opening with STEWS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.88 guesses and ranks #13,418 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 STEWS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.83, at or below the proven-optimal 3.88, 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 STOOZ.

Rhymes with WHOSE VIEWS SHOES BLUES CREWS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, STEWS is a kind of agitation or dish.

Synonyms SWEAT grudge fret BROOD

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
STEWS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

You remember Mary's homemade stews, don't you?
© tatoeba.org contributor Eccles17 (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I'll nurse you back to health with colorful vegetables and hearty stews.
© tatoeba.org contributor Eccles17 (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).