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

WHEWS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of whew

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

Use WHEWS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 83.6% 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 WHEWS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WHEWS 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 71.2% of games, misses completely in 28.8%, and leaves about 392 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,334 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.93 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 WHEWS 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.

3.47 Entropy (bits)
392 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
83.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WHEWS 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.

3.93 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#14,334 Rank among openers
Opening with WHEWS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.93 average. It ranks #14,334 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
32
3 guesses
586
4 guesses
1,274
5 guesses
431
6 guesses
31

Composition

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
18%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

WHEWS can come back 54 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

687 answers
584 answers
250 answers
156 answers
119 answers
87 answers
55 answers
40 answers
39 answers
35 answers
30 answers
29 answers
25 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4H4E1W4S1
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing WHEWS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WHEWS:

29% chance
Suggested:
TALON
24% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
10% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.8% →
TALON 5.81 bits
24.5% →
RAILE 5.39 bits
10.5% →
SAINT 5.33 bits
6.5% →
STAIR 4.86 bits
5.0% →
TORCH 4.92 bits
3.6% →
TRADE 4.29 bits
2.3% →
CARTE 4.75 bits
1.7% →
PALET 4.14 bits
1.6% →
TRICE 3.97 bits
1.5% →
SAULT 4.16 bits

Research on WHEWS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WHEWS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.95 guesses and ranks #14,440 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.10 guesses at best and is rank #7,130 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.93, at or below the proven-optimal 3.95, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT).