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

WHIST

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.1% of possible answers.

Open Solver with WHIST Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈwɪst//ˈʍɪst/[ˈw̥ɪst]

Noun

Any of several four-player card games, similar to bridge.

Noun

A session of playing this card game.

Interjection

Alternative spelling of whisht. Silence!, quiet!, hush!, shhh!, shush!

Interjection

Onomatopoeia for slicing.

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 WHIST performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WHIST 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 71.0% of games, misses completely in 29.0%, and leaves about 260 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,643 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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___T W in the 1st position and T in the 5th position W__S_ W in the 1st position and S in the 4th position _H__T H in the 2nd position and T in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe WHIST 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.

4.46 Entropy (bits)
260 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 49% of evaluated openers
1.49 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WHIST 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#4,643 Rank among openers
Opening with WHIST 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 3.66 average. It ranks #4,643 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
62
3 guesses
902
4 guesses
1,171
5 guesses
204
6 guesses
15
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:
IST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
32%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

WHIST can come back 103 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

689 answers
197 answers
154 answers
136 answers
116 answers
99 answers
91 answers
77 answers
69 answers
55 answers
48 answers
46 answers
40 answers
34 answers
31 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4H4I1S1T1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

CARLE LINER PARLE OATER CRANE CARNE

Strategy after playing WHIST

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WHIST:

29% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
8% chance
Suggested:
LINER
6% chance
Suggested:
PARLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.0% →
CARLE 6.11 bits
8.3% →
LINER 5.32 bits
6.5% →
PARLE 5.51 bits
5.7% →
OATER 5.46 bits
4.9% →
CRANE 4.92 bits
4.2% →
CARLE 5.07 bits
3.8% →
CARNE 5.18 bits
3.2% →
PRATE 4.51 bits
2.9% →
PARLE 4.92 bits
2.3% →
DROLE 4.85 bits

Research on WHIST

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

Optimal play

Opening with WHIST, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,472 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 WHIST can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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 WIHST. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WHIST is a kind of cards.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WHIST sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).