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

WAHOO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with WAHOO Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈwɑ.hu/

Noun

Acanthocybium solandri, a tropical and subtropical game fish.

Noun

The winged elm, Ulmus alata.

Interjection

A cry of pleasure or enthusiasm.

Alternative forms: whahoo

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 WAHOO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WAHOO 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 71.0% of games, misses completely in 29.0%, and leaves about 334 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,864 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.89 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.

W___O W in the 1st position and O in the 5th position W__O_ W in the 1st position and O in the 4th position _A__O A in the 2nd position and O in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe WAHOO 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.

3.69 Entropy (bits)
334 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 11% of evaluated openers
2.25 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WAHOO 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.

3.89 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,864 Rank among openers
Opening with WAHOO 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 3.89 average. It ranks #13,864 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
634
4 guesses
1,263
5 guesses
389
6 guesses
31
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
3 vowels
Common:
AO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
23%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

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

688 answers
398 answers
261 answers
218 answers
145 answers
80 answers
66 answers
63 answers
38 answers
35 answers
35 answers
33 answers
29 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
9 answers
7 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
4 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1H4O1O1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

SLIER SLATE CRUSE SLYER CRISE TONAL

Strategy after playing WAHOO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WAHOO:

29% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
17% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
11% chance
Suggested:
CRUSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.0% →
SLIER 6.02 bits
16.8% →
SLATE 5.49 bits
11.0% →
CRUSE 5.29 bits
9.2% →
SLYER 4.70 bits
6.1% →
CRISE 5.28 bits
3.4% →
TONAL 4.42 bits
2.8% →
STARE 4.45 bits
2.7% →
CRUET 4.87 bits
1.6% →
SIREN 4.16 bits
1.5% →
CARET 3.79 bits

Research on WAHOO

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

Optimal play

Opening with WAHOO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.90 guesses and ranks #13,765 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.04 guesses at best and is rank #6,683 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.89, at or below the proven-optimal 3.90, 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

Two syllables, stress on the second syllable Say it WUHHOO.

Rhymes with DEBUT THREW SCREW QUEUE RENEW

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WAHOO is a kind of bush or shrub.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WAHOO 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).