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

CHIAO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A Taoist ritual of cosmic renewal.

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 CHIAO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CHIAO 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 86.8% of games, misses completely in 13.2%, and leaves about 163 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,215 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 CHIAO 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.

4.81 Entropy (bits)
163 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 72% of evaluated openers
1.14 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CHIAO 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#6,215 Rank among openers
Opening with CHIAO left 2 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,215 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
898
4 guesses
1,127
5 guesses
247
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
3 vowels
Common:
AIO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
30%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

CHIAO can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

352 answers
314 answers
283 answers
170 answers
135 answers
84 answers
76 answers
63 answers
46 answers
43 answers
41 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
32 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3H4I1A1O1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing CHIAO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CHIAO:

15% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
13% chance
Suggested:
SLEER
12% chance
Suggested:
DORSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.8%
TARSE 5.44 bits
13.2%
SLEER 5.82 bits
11.9%
DORSE 5.22 bits
7.2%
TILDE 5.03 bits
5.7%
STURE 4.80 bits
3.5%
STEAL 4.47 bits
3.2%
TALER 4.26 bits
2.7%
TRAIN 4.60 bits
1.9%
SLART 4.59 bits
1.8%
LEAST 4.39 bits

Research on CHIAO

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

Optimal play

Opening with CHIAO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,425 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.86 guesses at best and is rank #3,161 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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 second syllable Say it KEEOW. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CHIAO 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).