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

CAVED

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /keɪvd/

Verb

past participle of cave

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it KAYVD.

Rhymes with SAVED PAVED WAVED RAVED

Related meanings

Synonyms undermine

In a sentence

The roof was caved in.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Her skull is partially caved in.
© tatoeba.org contributor megamanenm (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use CAVED in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.4% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No 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.

How CAVED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CAVED 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 80.6% of games, misses completely in 19.4%, and leaves about 181 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,880 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 CAVED 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.

4.65 Entropy (bits)
181 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CAVED 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#7,880 Rank among openers
Opening with CAVED left 1 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 3.72 average. It ranks #7,880 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
789
4 guesses
1,268
5 guesses
221
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AE

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
35%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

CAVED can come back 93 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

462 answers
275 answers
218 answers
154 answers
146 answers
119 answers
87 answers
62 answers
58 answers
56 answers
46 answers
42 answers
38 answers
37 answers
36 answers
33 answers
30 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1V4E1D2
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing CAVED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CAVED:

19% chance
Suggested:
SNOUT
12% chance
Suggested:
STIRE
9% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.4% →
SNOUT 5.79 bits
11.5% →
STIRE 5.37 bits
9.1% →
SLART 5.49 bits
6.5% →
SENOR 4.54 bits
6.1% →
SLART 5.31 bits
5.0% →
SONLY 4.56 bits
3.6% →
TOUCH 4.62 bits
2.6% →
DROIT 4.55 bits
2.4% →
NOIRE 4.27 bits
2.3% →
DEIGN 4.38 bits

Research on CAVED

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

Optimal play

Opening with CAVED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,871 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 CAVED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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
CAVED sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.9 of 5).

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).