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

BRAZE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /bɹeɪz/

Verb

To cover with brass, or as with brass.

Verb

To join two metal pieces, without melting them, using heat and diffusion of a jointing alloy of capillary thickness.

Noun

A kind of small charcoal used for roasting ore.

Alternative forms: braise, braize

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 BRAZE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BRAZE 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 81.5% of games, misses completely in 18.5%, and leaves about 167 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,493 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 BRAZE 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.

4.66 Entropy (bits)
167 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 62% of evaluated openers
1.29 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BRAZE 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#10,493 Rank among openers
Opening with BRAZE left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,493 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
67
3 guesses
736
4 guesses
1,233
5 guesses
295
6 guesses
20
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:
AER

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
39%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

BRAZE can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

439 answers
221 answers
203 answers
157 answers
154 answers
119 answers
102 answers
87 answers
79 answers
78 answers
55 answers
53 answers
49 answers
49 answers
41 answers
37 answers
35 answers
31 answers
30 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3R1A1Z10E1
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 17 points

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

Strategy after playing BRAZE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BRAZE:

18% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
9% chance
Suggested:
NATAL
9% chance
Suggested:
INLET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.5%
SOILY 5.72 bits
9.3%
NATAL 5.10 bits
8.6%
INLET 5.15 bits
6.6%
SEITY 3.90 bits
6.5%
SOILY 4.64 bits
5.0%
COURT 5.02 bits
4.3%
SLANT 4.65 bits
3.7%
CAROL 4.44 bits
3.3%
PRINT 4.05 bits
3.3%
CLEAT 4.59 bits

Research on BRAZE

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

Optimal play

Opening with BRAZE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,839 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 BRAZE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77; proven optimal play reaches 3.76. 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 BRAYZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BRAZE is a kind of solder.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BRAZE 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).