5 FiveLetterWords
Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

WELCH

WELCH is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 90.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with WELCH Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /wɛlt͡ʃ/

Noun

A person who defaults on an obligation, especially a small one.

“She's a welch. That watering-can isn't hers: I lent it to her three years ago.”

Verb

To fail to repay a small debt.

Verb

To fail to fulfill an obligation.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 WELCH performs as a guess

WELCH is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 78.3% of games, misses completely in 21.7%, and leaves about 227 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,237 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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___H W in the 1st position and H in the 5th position W__C_ W in the 1st position and C in the 4th position _E__H E in the 2nd position and H in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe WELCH 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.

4.40 Entropy (bits)
227 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
90.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 45% of evaluated openers
1.55 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WELCH 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,237 Rank among openers
Opening with WELCH left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,237 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
848
4 guesses
1,207
5 guesses
229
6 guesses
17
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
1 vowels
Common:
EL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
25%
All gray
22%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S I L E N
B E L C H
W E L C H

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches WELCH in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

WELCH can come back 89 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

515 answers
395 answers
200 answers
146 answers
123 answers
106 answers
76 answers
58 answers
56 answers
55 answers
43 answers
41 answers
40 answers
36 answers
34 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4E1L1C3H4
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Try next

ROAST ARISE SAINT SAINE STAIR SONAR

Strategy after playing WELCH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WELCH:

22% chance
Suggested:
ROAST
17% chance
Suggested:
ARISE
8% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.7% →
ROAST 6.01 bits
16.6% →
ARISE 5.37 bits
8.4% →
SAINT 5.16 bits
6.1% →
SAINE 4.52 bits
5.2% →
STAIR 4.72 bits
4.5% →
SONAR 5.26 bits
3.2% →
SAINT 5.00 bits
2.4% →
ORATE 4.72 bits
2.4% →
STRAE 4.87 bits
2.3% →
SOILY 4.43 bits

Research on WELCH

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

Optimal play

Opening with WELCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,092 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,450 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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 WEHLCH.

Rhymes with WELSH BELCH

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WELCH is a kind of cheat.

Synonyms WELSH

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WELCH sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 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).