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

WISES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.4% of possible answers.

Open Solver with WISES Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of wise

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 WISES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WISES 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 77.5% of games, misses completely in 22.5%, and leaves about 253 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,131 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.85 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___S W in the 1st position and S in the 5th position W__E_ W in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _I__S I in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position WI_ES W in the 1st position, I in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe WISES 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.

4.06 Entropy (bits)
253 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 25% of evaluated openers
1.89 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WISES 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.

3.85 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,131 Rank among openers
Opening with WISES left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.85 average. It ranks #13,131 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
662
4 guesses
1,276
5 guesses
352
6 guesses
19
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
27%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

WISES can come back 69 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

535 answers
393 answers
211 answers
188 answers
178 answers
133 answers
96 answers
92 answers
59 answers
38 answers
34 answers
29 answers
28 answers
28 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4I1S1E1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

CAROL LEARE CAIRN SLART OATER SALTY

Strategy after playing WISES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WISES:

23% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
17% chance
Suggested:
LEARE
9% chance
Suggested:
CAIRN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.5% →
CAROL 5.85 bits
16.6% →
LEARE 5.48 bits
8.9% →
CAIRN 5.33 bits
7.9% →
SLART 5.22 bits
7.5% →
OATER 4.32 bits
5.6% →
SLART 4.93 bits
4.0% →
SALTY 3.75 bits
3.9% →
TRIDE 4.21 bits
2.5% →
STINK 4.41 bits
1.6% →
DRAWL 4.38 bits

Research on WISES

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

Optimal play

Opening with WISES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.85 guesses and ranks #12,518 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 WISES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.85, at or below the proven-optimal 3.85, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it WYZUHZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WISES is a kind of way.

Synonyms FRESH SMART knowing SASSY forward informed

Opposites foolish backward

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WISES sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (3.0 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).