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

DEVON

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈdɛvən/

Noun

A type of processed meat sausage.

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 DEVON performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DEVON 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 79.4% of games, misses completely in 20.6%, and leaves about 220 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,589 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 DEVON 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.

4.44 Entropy (bits)
220 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 47% of evaluated openers
1.51 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DEVON 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#5,589 Rank among openers
Opening with DEVON left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,589 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
65
3 guesses
837
4 guesses
1,251
5 guesses
188
6 guesses
12
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:
ENO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
24%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

DEVON can come back 100 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

489 answers
394 answers
213 answers
162 answers
127 answers
97 answers
77 answers
70 answers
65 answers
57 answers
52 answers
34 answers
29 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2E1V4O1N1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing DEVON

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DEVON:

21% chance
Suggested:
SLART
17% chance
Suggested:
SLART
9% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.6%
SLART 6.06 bits
16.6%
SLART 5.82 bits
9.0%
SLART 5.23 bits
6.8%
SAINT 5.26 bits
5.3%
SLART 5.12 bits
4.1%
WORSE 4.47 bits
3.2%
SIREE 4.63 bits
2.9%
RAILE 4.79 bits
2.7%
TALER 4.51 bits
2.4%
LURID 4.70 bits

Research on DEVON

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

Optimal play

Opening with DEVON, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #7,090 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 DEVON can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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 first syllable Say it DEHVUHN.

Rhymes with SEVEN BEVAN

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, DEVON is a kind of cattle.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DEVON sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 7 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

In Devon we have wonderful coastal walking.
© tatoeba.org contributor gcaplan (CC BY 2.0 FR)
In Devon we have wonderful moorland walking.
© tatoeba.org contributor gcaplan (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).