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

WHIOS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of whio

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

Use WHIOS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.8% 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 WHIOS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WHIOS 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 75.0% of games, misses completely in 25.0%, and leaves about 244 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,516 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 WHIOS 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.

4.29 Entropy (bits)
244 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WHIOS 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#8,516 Rank among openers
Opening with WHIOS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,516 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
819
4 guesses
1,203
5 guesses
256
6 guesses
20

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
IOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
25%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

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

596 answers
257 answers
236 answers
223 answers
133 answers
84 answers
77 answers
76 answers
52 answers
52 answers
47 answers
44 answers
36 answers
33 answers
31 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4H4I1O1S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing WHIOS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WHIOS:

25% chance
Suggested:
RATEL
11% chance
Suggested:
GLARE
10% chance
Suggested:
STARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.0% →
RATEL 6.01 bits
10.8% →
GLARE 5.25 bits
9.9% →
STARE 5.62 bits
9.4% →
LINER 5.29 bits
5.6% →
CRANE 4.89 bits
3.5% →
RANCE 5.07 bits
3.2% →
STORE 4.63 bits
3.2% →
TALER 4.88 bits
2.2% →
PLANE 4.21 bits
2.2% →
CRUET 4.49 bits

Research on WHIOS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WHIOS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,757 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #4,027 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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).