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

AVOWS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of avow

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 AVOWS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts AVOWS 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 76.5% of games, misses completely in 23.5%, and leaves about 267 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,667 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 AVOWS 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.

3.99 Entropy (bits)
267 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 22% of evaluated openers
1.96 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How AVOWS 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#11,667 Rank among openers
Opening with AVOWS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,667 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
35
3 guesses
735
4 guesses
1,264
5 guesses
302
6 guesses
17
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:
AOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
18%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

AVOWS can come back 64 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

558 answers
407 answers
218 answers
213 answers
170 answers
96 answers
74 answers
71 answers
68 answers
49 answers
41 answers
35 answers
35 answers
30 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1V4O1W4S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing AVOWS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing AVOWS:

24% chance
Suggested:
LINER
17% chance
Suggested:
CARTE
9% chance
Suggested:
STILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.5%
LINER 5.86 bits
17.1%
CARTE 5.44 bits
9.2%
STILE 5.35 bits
9.0%
TONER 5.27 bits
7.2%
STALE 4.91 bits
4.0%
TRICE 4.24 bits
3.1%
CAROL 4.48 bits
3.0%
TRINE 4.91 bits
2.9%
CRUET 3.95 bits
2.1%
TRINE 4.83 bits

Research on AVOWS

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

Optimal play

Opening with AVOWS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #12,059 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 #5,116 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 3.83, 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 first syllable Say it AYVOHZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, AVOWS is a kind of declare or admit.

Synonyms SWEAR verify swan assert affirm

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
AVOWS 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).