CAIRN
CAIRN is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /kɛən//kɛ(ə)ɹn//keːn/
- Noun
-
A rounded or conical heap of stones erected by early inhabitants of the British Isles, apparently as a sepulchral monument.
- Noun
-
A pile of stones heaped up as a landmark, to guide travelers on land or at sea, or to arrest attention, as in surveying, or in leaving traces of an exploring party, etc.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Scots cairn, from Scottish Gaelic càrn, from Old Irish carn, from Proto-Celtic *karnos, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱerh₂- (“horn”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it KEHRN.
In a sentence
The Cairn terrier is a relatively small dog, with Scottish origins.
Use CAIRN in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 95.4% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How CAIRN performs as a guess
CAIRN is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 86.5% of games, misses completely in 13.5%, and leaves about 111 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #340 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.58 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe CAIRN 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How CAIRN 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches CAIRN in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
CAIRN can come back 127 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for CAIRN; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing CAIRN
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to CAIRN.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing CAIRN:
Research on CAIRN
Game-tree analysis and word research for CAIRN, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with CAIRN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #311 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.74 guesses at best and is rank #226 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.58, at or below the proven-optimal 3.61, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- CAIRN sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).