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

THOUS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of thou

Noun

plural of thou

Noun

plural of thou; the use of the second-person pronoun "thou," especially as a marker of archaism, formality, or reverence; also thou's.

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 THOUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts THOUS 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 75.5% of games, misses completely in 24.5%, and leaves about 209 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,298 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 THOUS 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.

4.64 Entropy (bits)
209 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 61% of evaluated openers
1.30 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How THOUS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#4,298 Rank among openers
Opening with THOUS 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 3.66 average. It ranks #4,298 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
923
4 guesses
1,141
5 guesses
203
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
OSTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
24%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

THOUS can come back 104 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

581 answers
207 answers
169 answers
140 answers
138 answers
107 answers
99 answers
63 answers
57 answers
52 answers
46 answers
44 answers
44 answers
37 answers
36 answers
36 answers
36 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1H4O1U1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing THOUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing THOUS:

24% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
9% chance
Suggested:
MARLE
7% chance
Suggested:
PARLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.5%
RAILE 6.18 bits
8.7%
MARLE 5.21 bits
7.1%
PARLE 5.61 bits
5.9%
PARLE 4.84 bits
5.8%
ALERT 5.38 bits
4.5%
BRANE 4.66 bits
4.2%
SLANE 4.77 bits
2.7%
CRINE 4.91 bits
2.4%
CARLE 5.02 bits
2.2%
SLANE 4.22 bits

Research on THOUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with THOUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,748 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,124 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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 THOWZ.

Rhymes with BROWS HOWES PLOWS CHOWS DHOWS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, THOUS is a kind of integer.

Synonyms m g GRAND k thousand yard

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
THOUS 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 sound (2.2 of 5).

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).