WELLS
WELLS is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /wɛlz/
- Noun
-
plural of well
“The town's water supply consisted of three wells, but a new one was being dug to meet demand from the new development.”
- Verb
-
third-person singular simple present indicative of well
“Every time she sees her little grandson, her face wells with joy.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Old English wella, genitive plural of well (“spring”), in reference to a residence near a group of springs. The original use of the genitive case here would've indicated origin. The -s ending of the modern form would be added later on upon reanalysis after the breakdown of the case system (outside of pronouns) that occurred in the development of English.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it WEHLZ.
Rhymes with TELLS CELLS SELLS BELLS YELLS
Related meanings
Synonyms good easily considerably substantially comfortably SWELL
Opposites ill BADLY unfortunate
In a sentence
I'm not digging your wells.
Anger wells up inside me.
Use WELLS in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 88.7% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How WELLS performs as a guess
Wordle accepts WELLS 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 75.7% of games, misses completely in 24.3%, and leaves about 270 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,308 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe WELLS 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How WELLS 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Feedback distribution
WELLS can come back 73 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for WELLS; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing WELLS
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to WELLS.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing WELLS:
Research on WELLS
Game-tree analysis and word research for WELLS, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with WELLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.84 guesses and ranks #12,339 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 WELLS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, at or below the proven-optimal 3.84, 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
- WELLS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 18 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
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).