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

STOWS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 84.7% of possible answers.

Open Solver with STOWS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of stow

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 STOWS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts STOWS 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 66.6% of games, misses completely in 33.4%, and leaves about 362 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,283 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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___S S in the 1st position and S in the 5th position S__W_ S in the 1st position and W in the 4th position _T__S T in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe STOWS 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.

3.73 Entropy (bits)
362 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 13% of evaluated openers
2.22 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How STOWS 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#11,283 Rank among openers
Opening with STOWS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,283 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
727
4 guesses
1,304
5 guesses
275
6 guesses
14
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:
OST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
67%
Green tile
26%
All gray
33%

Feedback distribution

STOWS can come back 62 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

794 answers
314 answers
242 answers
167 answers
108 answers
92 answers
90 answers
57 answers
52 answers
47 answers
38 answers
33 answers
30 answers
29 answers
25 answers
22 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1T1O1W4S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

RAILE TREAT CANER PLANE CRANE TONER

Strategy after playing STOWS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing STOWS:

33% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
13% chance
Suggested:
TREAT
10% chance
Suggested:
CANER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

33.4% →
RAILE 6.27 bits
13.2% →
TREAT 5.54 bits
10.2% →
CANER 5.33 bits
7.0% →
PLANE 5.31 bits
4.5% →
CRANE 4.72 bits
3.9% →
TONER 4.43 bits
3.8% →
PAIRE 5.26 bits
2.4% →
ARIEL 4.99 bits
2.2% →
TASER 4.49 bits
2.0% →
RAIKE 4.15 bits

Research on STOWS

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

Optimal play

Opening with STOWS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.86 guesses and ranks #12,892 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.98 guesses at best and is rank #5,788 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.86, 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 STOHZ. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, STOWS is a kind of pack.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
STOWS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.7 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; 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).