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

SWIMS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 81.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of swim

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of swim

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 SWIMS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SWIMS 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 61.1% of games, misses completely in 38.9%, and leaves about 445 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,411 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.86 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 SWIMS 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.

3.45 Entropy (bits)
445 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 6% of evaluated openers
2.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SWIMS 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.

3.86 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#13,411 Rank among openers
Opening with SWIMS left 1 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 3.86 average. It ranks #13,411 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
651
4 guesses
1,279
5 guesses
368
6 guesses
18
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:
IS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
61%
Green tile
29%
All gray
39%

Feedback distribution

SWIMS can come back 61 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

924 answers
270 answers
221 answers
155 answers
137 answers
137 answers
98 answers
45 answers
44 answers
42 answers
30 answers
23 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1W4I1M3S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing SWIMS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SWIMS:

39% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
11% chance
Suggested:
LINER
9% chance
Suggested:
LEANT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

38.9%
ROATE 6.11 bits
11.4%
LINER 5.20 bits
9.3%
LEANT 5.31 bits
6.5%
CRANE 4.99 bits
5.8%
MORAE 5.38 bits
5.8%
ROATE 5.53 bits
4.1%
DROLE 5.22 bits
1.9%
PARLE 4.37 bits
1.9%
LEANT 3.96 bits
1.8%
LEANT 4.25 bits

Research on SWIMS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SWIMS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,290 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.00 guesses at best and is rank #6,260 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.86, at or below the proven-optimal 3.87, 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 SWIHMZ.

Rhymes with LIMBS HYMNS WHIMS TRIMS SLIMS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SWIMS is a kind of sport or go.

Synonyms swimming FLOAT DROWN

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SWIMS 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.

In a sentence

He swims in the river.
© tatoeba.org contributor Zifre (CC BY 2.0 FR)
She swims better than me.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (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).