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

DOGES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of doge

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

Related meanings

Synonyms TRACK CLICK FRANK TRAIL CHASE tag

Use DOGES in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.4% 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 DOGES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DOGES 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 84.1% of games, misses completely in 15.9%, and leaves about 158 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,763 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 DOGES 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.

4.76 Entropy (bits)
158 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DOGES 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
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#5,763 Rank among openers
Opening with DOGES solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,763 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
53
3 guesses
858
4 guesses
1,237
5 guesses
197
6 guesses
9

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
31%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

DOGES can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

380 answers
293 answers
214 answers
146 answers
140 answers
132 answers
107 answers
57 answers
56 answers
55 answers
53 answers
50 answers
47 answers
47 answers
38 answers
32 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2O1G2E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing DOGES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DOGES:

16% chance
Suggested:
CAIRN
12% chance
Suggested:
REATE
9% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.9% →
CAIRN 5.92 bits
12.3% →
REATE 5.59 bits
9.0% →
SLART 5.28 bits
6.1% →
LATER 4.48 bits
5.9% →
ACTOR 5.11 bits
5.5% →
SLART 5.05 bits
4.5% →
CLARY 4.57 bits
2.4% →
SPORT 3.83 bits
2.3% →
BRANE 4.19 bits
2.3% →
NADIR 4.63 bits

Research on DOGES

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

Optimal play

Opening with DOGES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,938 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 DOGES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68; proven optimal play reaches 3.67. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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
DOGES sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).