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

ADOWN

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /əˈdaʊn/

Adverb

Down, downward; to or in a lower place.

Preposition

Down.

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 ADOWN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ADOWN 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 78.5% of games, misses completely in 21.5%, and leaves about 233 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,956 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 ADOWN 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.

4.32 Entropy (bits)
233 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 40% of evaluated openers
1.62 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ADOWN 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#6,956 Rank among openers
Opening with ADOWN 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 3.70 average. It ranks #6,956 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
53
3 guesses
847
4 guesses
1,217
5 guesses
219
6 guesses
16
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
2 vowels
Common:
ANO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
21%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

ADOWN can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

510 answers
423 answers
172 answers
155 answers
128 answers
112 answers
85 answers
72 answers
66 answers
56 answers
47 answers
43 answers
33 answers
31 answers
28 answers
28 answers
25 answers
24 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1D2O1W4N1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing ADOWN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ADOWN:

21% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
18% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
7% chance
Suggested:
CRUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.5%
SLIER 6.08 bits
17.8%
TARSE 5.66 bits
7.2%
CRUET 5.17 bits
6.5%
SUITE 5.22 bits
5.4%
STURE 4.73 bits
4.7%
DRICE 5.21 bits
3.6%
SALET 4.45 bits
3.0%
LEARY 4.70 bits
2.8%
CAROL 4.53 bits
2.4%
SLIER 4.95 bits

Research on ADOWN

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

Optimal play

Opening with ADOWN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,263 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 ADOWN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 second syllable Say it UHDOWN. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ADOWN 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).