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

STOMA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈstəʊmə//ˈstoʊmə/

Noun

One of the tiny pores in the epidermis of a leaf or stem through which gases and water vapor pass.

Noun

A small opening in a membrane; a surgically constructed opening, especially one in the abdominal wall that permits the passage of waste after a colostomy or ileostomy; an artificial anus.

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

Etymology

From New Latin stoma, from Ancient Greek στόμα (stóma, “mouth”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it STOHMUH.

Rhymes with AROMA DOUMA

Related meanings

Synonyms pore

In a sentence

Mark got a stoma temporarily.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use STOMA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.4% of possible answers.

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 STOMA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts STOMA 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 83.6% of games, misses completely in 16.4%, and leaves about 157 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,525 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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 STOMA 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.

4.83 Entropy (bits)
157 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How STOMA 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#3,525 Rank among openers
Opening with STOMA 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 3.65 average. It ranks #3,525 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
947
4 guesses
1,129
5 guesses
195
6 guesses
20

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AOST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
28%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

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

391 answers
316 answers
166 answers
156 answers
138 answers
104 answers
93 answers
64 answers
62 answers
57 answers
56 answers
54 answers
44 answers
42 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1T1O1M3A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing STOMA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing STOMA:

16% chance
Suggested:
LINER
13% chance
Suggested:
LEARN
7% chance
Suggested:
TRITE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.4% →
LINER 6.00 bits
13.3% →
LEARN 5.41 bits
7.0% →
TRITE 5.38 bits
6.5% →
GONER 5.05 bits
5.8% →
CARLE 4.94 bits
4.4% →
PLIER 5.14 bits
3.9% →
CRINE 4.55 bits
2.7% →
PLANE 4.39 bits
2.6% →
ROUET 4.46 bits
2.4% →
PURSE 5.00 bits

Research on STOMA

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

Optimal play

Opening with STOMA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,785 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,072 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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
STOMA 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.

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).