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

WATTS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of watt

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

Etymology

Patronymic surname from the Middle English given name Wat, derived from Walter, equivalent to Watt + -s.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it WAHTS.

Rhymes with SHOTS SPOTS SLOTS PLOTS SCOTS

Related meanings

Synonyms w

Use WATTS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 87.9% 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 WATTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WATTS 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 71.7% of games, misses completely in 28.3%, and leaves about 289 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,252 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 WATTS 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.

4.03 Entropy (bits)
289 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WATTS 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,252 Rank among openers
Opening with WATTS 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 3.79 average. It ranks #11,252 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
743
4 guesses
1,251
5 guesses
293
6 guesses
22

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
AST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
25%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

WATTS can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

674 answers
308 answers
222 answers
167 answers
155 answers
96 answers
90 answers
71 answers
46 answers
43 answers
43 answers
42 answers
42 answers
38 answers
33 answers
24 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
13 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1T1T1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing WATTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WATTS:

28% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
13% chance
Suggested:
LEARN
9% chance
Suggested:
POIRE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.3% →
RIONE 5.97 bits
12.9% →
LEARN 5.42 bits
9.3% →
POIRE 5.41 bits
7.0% →
MORNE 4.75 bits
6.5% →
TRINE 5.41 bits
4.0% →
CHARE 4.67 bits
3.8% →
ROUET 4.56 bits
3.0% →
ALERT 4.58 bits
1.9% →
POREY 4.34 bits
1.8% →
LEANT 3.96 bits

Research on WATTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WATTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,541 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 WATTS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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
WATTS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 6 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).