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

CLADE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /kleɪd/

Noun

A group of animals or other organisms derived from a common ancestor species.

Noun

A higher level grouping of a genetic haplogroup.

Verb

To be part of a clade; to form a clade.

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

Etymology

Learned borrowing from Ancient Greek κλάδος (kládos, “shoot, branch”). Coined by British evolutionary biologist, philosopher, author Julian Huxley in 1957 in a paper titled The Three Types of Evolutionary Process in Nature. Doublet of cladus and possibly holt.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

In a sentence

People with a given skin color do not form a genetic clade.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use CLADE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.3% 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 CLADE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CLADE 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 85.7% of games, misses completely in 14.3%, and leaves about 113 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #328 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe CLADE 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.

5.36 Entropy (bits)
113 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CLADE 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.

3.58 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#328 Rank among openers
Opening with CLADE left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.58 average. It ranks #328 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
83
3 guesses
988
4 guesses
1,136
5 guesses
137
6 guesses
9

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AEL

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
40%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

CLADE can come back 125 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

340 answers
214 answers
161 answers
143 answers
89 answers
80 answers
73 answers
72 answers
71 answers
71 answers
61 answers
60 answers
44 answers
42 answers
40 answers
39 answers
35 answers
30 answers
30 answers
27 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3L1A1D2E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing CLADE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CLADE:

14% chance
Suggested:
SNORT
9% chance
Suggested:
RESET
7% chance
Suggested:
SATYR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.3% →
SNORT 6.02 bits
9.0% →
RESET 5.45 bits
6.8% →
SATYR 5.02 bits
6.0% →
TORSE 4.72 bits
3.7% →
SILLY 4.88 bits
3.4% →
TAPER 4.36 bits
3.1% →
SONAR 4.34 bits
3.0% →
TOUCH 4.72 bits
3.0% →
SHART 4.66 bits
3.0% →
LEVEL 4.02 bits

Research on CLADE

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

Optimal play

Opening with CLADE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #408 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 CLADE can 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
CLADE 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).