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

BOXED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /bɒkst//ˈbɑːkst/

Verb

simple past and past participle of box

Adjective

Packed into a box or boxes.

“The books are boxed, ready for shipping.”

Adjective

In bridge and other card games if the cards in a pack are reversed face-up and face-down then the pack is said to be boxed.

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 BOXED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BOXED 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 74.1% of games, misses completely in 25.9%, and leaves about 291 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,757 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 BOXED 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.

3.98 Entropy (bits)
291 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 22% of evaluated openers
1.97 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BOXED 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
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,757 Rank among openers
Opening with BOXED left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,757 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
46
3 guesses
710
4 guesses
1,274
5 guesses
307
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:
EO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
32%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

BOXED can come back 66 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

616 answers
433 answers
206 answers
183 answers
134 answers
78 answers
76 answers
69 answers
52 answers
44 answers
41 answers
35 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3O1X8E1D2
Total: 15 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing BOXED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BOXED:

26% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
18% chance
Suggested:
SLART
9% chance
Suggested:
ARSON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.9%
SAINT 6.06 bits
18.2%
SLART 5.86 bits
8.7%
ARSON 5.17 bits
7.7%
STAIR 4.71 bits
5.6%
SLART 4.52 bits
3.3%
SNARE 4.32 bits
3.2%
GEARE 4.54 bits
2.9%
DRAIN 4.69 bits
2.2%
SLANT 4.63 bits
1.9%
MOWER 2.90 bits

Research on BOXED

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

Optimal play

Opening with BOXED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,177 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 BOXED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80; proven optimal play reaches 3.79. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 BAHKST.

Related meanings

Synonyms enclosed bordered

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BOXED sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.4 of 5).

In a sentence

Boxed wine doesn't taste as good.
© tatoeba.org contributor Teangloir (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Boxed wine isn't usually very good.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).