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

YAWLS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with YAWLS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of yawl

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 YAWLS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts YAWLS 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 209 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,669 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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.

Y___S Y in the 1st position and S in the 5th position Y__L_ Y in the 1st position and L in the 4th position _A__S A in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe YAWLS 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.

4.39 Entropy (bits)
209 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 44% of evaluated openers
1.55 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How YAWLS 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#7,669 Rank among openers
Opening with YAWLS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,669 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
28
3 guesses
870
4 guesses
1,217
5 guesses
224
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:
ALS

Feedback chances

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

Feedback distribution

YAWLS can come back 71 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

533 answers
228 answers
225 answers
166 answers
144 answers
131 answers
125 answers
103 answers
50 answers
49 answers
45 answers
38 answers
37 answers
37 answers
31 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Y4A1W4L1S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

TRINE STIRE TRONE RIONE REACT TONER

Strategy after playing YAWLS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing YAWLS:

22% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
10% chance
Suggested:
STIRE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRONE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.5% →
TRINE 6.26 bits
9.6% →
STIRE 5.57 bits
9.5% →
TRONE 5.59 bits
7.0% →
RIONE 4.98 bits
6.1% →
RIONE 4.78 bits
5.5% →
REACT 4.59 bits
5.3% →
TONER 5.02 bits
4.3% →
PEART 4.95 bits
2.1% →
TRINE 3.59 bits
2.1% →
TRONE 4.87 bits

Research on YAWLS

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

Optimal play

Opening with YAWLS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,213 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,629 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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 YAWLZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, YAWLS is a kind of boat or vessel.

Synonyms roar DANDY howl

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
YAWLS 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); 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).