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

YOWSA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Interjection

Alternative form of yowzah.

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

Use YOWSA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.4% 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 YOWSA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts YOWSA 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 81.0% of games, misses completely in 19.0%, and leaves about 205 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,631 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 YOWSA 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.

4.37 Entropy (bits)
205 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How YOWSA 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#9,631 Rank among openers
Opening with YOWSA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,631 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
31
3 guesses
809
4 guesses
1,236
5 guesses
260
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
21%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

YOWSA can come back 68 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

452 answers
390 answers
167 answers
152 answers
146 answers
118 answers
113 answers
88 answers
80 answers
60 answers
48 answers
46 answers
42 answers
40 answers
37 answers
36 answers
33 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Y4O1W4S1A1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing YOWSA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing YOWSA:

19% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
16% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
7% chance
Suggested:
TRICE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.0% →
TRINE 6.11 bits
16.4% →
CARLE 5.50 bits
7.0% →
TRICE 5.19 bits
6.4% →
TRINE 5.20 bits
6.1% →
PLIER 4.58 bits
4.9% →
CRUET 4.95 bits
4.7% →
PLATE 4.68 bits
3.7% →
TARDY 4.03 bits
3.4% →
BATON 4.55 bits
2.5% →
TRIPE 4.00 bits

Research on YOWSA

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

Optimal play

Opening with YOWSA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,305 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,094 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT).