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

WASHI

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A tough paper used in traditional Japanese art forms.

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

Etymology

From Japanese 和紙 (washi).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use WASHI in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.0% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

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

How WASHI performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WASHI 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 80.7% of games, misses completely in 19.3%, and leaves about 214 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,860 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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 WASHI 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.

4.26 Entropy (bits)
214 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WASHI 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.

3.78 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#10,860 Rank among openers
Opening with WASHI solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.78 average. It ranks #10,860 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
765
4 guesses
1,231
5 guesses
288
6 guesses
25

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
20%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

WASHI can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

460 answers
316 answers
297 answers
174 answers
172 answers
112 answers
105 answers
86 answers
77 answers
46 answers
42 answers
37 answers
35 answers
35 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
25 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1S1H4I1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing WASHI

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WASHI:

19% chance
Suggested:
LOURE
13% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
12% chance
Suggested:
ALERT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.3% →
LOURE 5.82 bits
13.3% →
TRINE 5.29 bits
12.5% →
ALERT 5.49 bits
7.3% →
PORTE 5.38 bits
7.2% →
TONER 4.76 bits
4.7% →
CONTE 5.40 bits
4.4% →
REACT 4.80 bits
3.6% →
STILE 4.64 bits
3.2% →
ANVIL 4.50 bits
1.9% →
STURE 4.56 bits

Research on WASHI

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

Optimal play

Opening with WASHI, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,546 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 WASHI can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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
WASHI 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).