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

WHATS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of what; used as a stand-in to collectively pluralize arbitrary instances of things. Often used along with whys, hows, etc.

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 WHATS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WHATS 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 75.6% of games, misses completely in 24.4%, and leaves about 229 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,296 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 WHATS 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.

4.50 Entropy (bits)
229 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 52% of evaluated openers
1.45 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WHATS 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,296 Rank among openers
Opening with WHATS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.69 average. It ranks #6,296 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
869
4 guesses
1,189
5 guesses
228
6 guesses
12
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:
AST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
26%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

WHATS can come back 96 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

580 answers
317 answers
175 answers
159 answers
105 answers
99 answers
85 answers
67 answers
66 answers
39 answers
37 answers
36 answers
30 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4H4A1T1S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing WHATS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WHATS:

24% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
13% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
7% chance
Suggested:
POIRE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.4%
RIONE 5.98 bits
13.4%
CARLE 5.37 bits
7.4%
POIRE 5.45 bits
6.7%
ROUET 5.53 bits
4.4%
DRICE 4.69 bits
4.2%
TALER 4.58 bits
3.6%
ROUET 4.61 bits
2.8%
SALEP 4.42 bits
2.8%
CONEY 4.75 bits
1.6%
CLINE 4.15 bits

Research on WHATS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WHATS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,283 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,851 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 WUHTS.

Rhymes with BUTTS SHUTS SLUTS PUTTS MUTTS

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WHATS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 8 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

Whats the name of this style?
© tatoeba.org contributor jiraixu (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He is pretending that he doesnt know us whats up with him?
© tatoeba.org contributor Massin04 (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).