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

WOOLS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of wool

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 WOOLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WOOLS 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 68.6% of games, misses completely in 31.4%, and leaves about 335 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,597 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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 WOOLS 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.

3.92 Entropy (bits)
335 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 19% of evaluated openers
2.03 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WOOLS 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#11,597 Rank among openers
Opening with WOOLS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,597 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
749
4 guesses
1,218
5 guesses
318
6 guesses
23
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:
LOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
31%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

WOOLS can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

746 answers
317 answers
282 answers
122 answers
122 answers
88 answers
73 answers
61 answers
44 answers
43 answers
36 answers
33 answers
33 answers
29 answers
25 answers
25 answers
20 answers
19 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4O1O1L1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing WOOLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WOOLS:

31% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
13% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
12% chance
Suggested:
RAINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.4%
TIARE 6.24 bits
13.4%
TIARE 5.71 bits
11.9%
RAINE 5.39 bits
5.1%
MANOR 5.23 bits
5.1%
TRUCE 4.85 bits
3.7%
DAINE 4.62 bits
3.1%
PRATE 4.66 bits
2.6%
SPANE 4.69 bits
1.9%
CRUET 4.17 bits
1.8%
TRICE 4.83 bits

Research on WOOLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WOOLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,530 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,322 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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 WUULZ.

Rhymes with PULLS BULLS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WOOLS is a kind of material or fiber.

Synonyms fleece

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WOOLS 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).