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

WOOTZ

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /wuːts/

Noun

A type of steel from India, much admired for making sword blades.

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

Etymology

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, probably from a misreading of wook, an English transcription of (the root of) Kannada ಉಕ್ಕು (ukku),ಉರ್ಕು (urku, “steel”), Telugu ఉక్కు (ukku, “steel”); akin to Tamil உருகு (uruku, “to melt”) and உருக்கு (urukku, “melted thing, steel”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use WOOTZ in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 76.0% 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 WOOTZ performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WOOTZ 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 54.8% of games, misses completely in 45.2%, and leaves about 573 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,284 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 WOOTZ 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.

3.14 Entropy (bits)
573 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
76.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WOOTZ 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
99.87% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#14,284 Rank among openers
Opening with WOOTZ left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.93 average. It ranks #14,284 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
586
4 guesses
1,261
5 guesses
439
6 guesses
26

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
OT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
55%
Green tile
28%
All gray
45%

Feedback distribution

WOOTZ can come back 56 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1077 answers
366 answers
155 answers
117 answers
113 answers
94 answers
45 answers
44 answers
44 answers
43 answers
40 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4O1O1T1Z10
Total: 17 points

Words With Friends

Total: 17 points

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

Strategy after playing WOOTZ

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WOOTZ:

45% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
15% chance
Suggested:
REAST
7% chance
Suggested:
CARLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

45.2% →
RAILE 6.20 bits
15.4% →
REAST 5.59 bits
6.5% →
CARLE 4.82 bits
4.9% →
CANER 5.29 bits
4.7% →
CRANE 5.07 bits
3.9% →
RAISE 4.75 bits
1.9% →
RAILE 4.70 bits
1.8% →
NAICE 3.85 bits
1.8% →
SANER 4.57 bits
1.8% →
STURE 3.93 bits

Research on WOOTZ

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

Optimal play

Opening with WOOTZ, 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 4.07 guesses at best and is rank #6,976 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WOOTZ 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).