5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

TOUCH

Yes, TOUCH was the Wordle answer on December 22, 2023 (Wordle #916).

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /tʌt͡ʃ//tɛt͡ʃ//tɑt͡ʃ/

Verb

Primarily physical senses.

“I touched his face softly.”

Verb

Primarily non-physical senses.

“My grandfather, as many people know, was touched with greatness.”

Noun

An act of touching, especially with the hand or finger.

“Suddenly, in the crowd, I felt a touch at my shoulder.”

Noun

The faculty or sense of perception by physical contact.

“With the lights out, she had to rely on touch to find her desk.”

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

Etymology

From Middle English touchen, tochen, from Old French tochier (“to touch”) (whence Modern French toucher; compare French doublet toquer (“to offend, bother, harass”)), from Vulgar Latin *tuccō (“to knock, strike, offend”), from Frankish *tukkōn (“to knock, strike, touch”), from Proto-Germanic *tukkōną (“to tug, grab, grasp”), from Proto-Indo-European *dewk- (“to draw, pull, lead”). Largely displaced native Middle English rinen, from Old English hrīnan (whence Modern English rine).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it TUHCH.

Rhymes with DUTCH HUTCH KUTCH MUTCH

Related meanings

Synonyms meet feeling MATCH contact REACH impact

In a sentence

You will not touch that.
© tatoeba.org contributor mailohilohi (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Get in touch with me.
© tatoeba.org contributor _undertoad (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use TOUCH in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.4% of possible answers.

Open Solver with TOUCH Open Word Finder

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: December 22, 2023 (#916).

See the full page for that puzzle: December 22, 2023 (#916).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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TOUCH in Connections

11 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . Showing the 5 most recent. A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.

How TOUCH performs as a guess

TOUCH is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 73.8% of games, misses completely in 26.2%, and leaves about 229 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,941 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

T___H T in the 1st position and H in the 5th position T__C_ T in the 1st position and C in the 4th position _O__H O in the 2nd position and H in the 5th position TO_CH T in the 1st position, O in the 2nd position, C in the 4th position, and H in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe TOUCH 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)
229 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
90.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TOUCH 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
100% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#3,941 Rank among openers
Opening with TOUCH solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.65 average. It ranks #3,941 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
955
4 guesses
1,102
5 guesses
208
6 guesses
27

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
OTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
30%
All gray
26%

Example solver route

R O A T E
C U M I N
T O U C H

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches TOUCH in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

TOUCH can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

624 answers
211 answers
192 answers
137 answers
128 answers
101 answers
75 answers
64 answers
55 answers
52 answers
44 answers
42 answers
39 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1O1U1C3H4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

RAILE SERAL ARSON SILER DROLE CRANE

Strategy after playing TOUCH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TOUCH:

26% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
9% chance
Suggested:
SERAL
8% chance
Suggested:
ARSON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.2% →
RAILE 6.27 bits
8.9% →
SERAL 5.70 bits
8.1% →
ARSON 5.19 bits
5.7% →
SILER 4.87 bits
5.4% →
DROLE 4.65 bits
4.2% →
CRANE 5.23 bits
3.1% →
SARED 5.19 bits
2.7% →
DAINE 5.06 bits
2.3% →
PLORE 4.26 bits
2.2% →
SLANE 4.51 bits

Research on TOUCH

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

Optimal play

Opening with TOUCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,675 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 TOUCH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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
TOUCH sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 81 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Learner level
Appears in beginner learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level A1); among the first words English learners study.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 4, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 67 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with touch (4.9 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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).