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

DONEE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with DONEE Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Someone who receives a gift from a donor.

“John became the donee of the bone marrow donated by his brother.”

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 DONEE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DONEE 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 78.5% of games, misses completely in 21.5%, and leaves about 179 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,460 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

D___E D in the 1st position and E in the 5th position D__E_ D in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _O__E O in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in DONEE.

First-turn measures

All four describe DONEE 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.

4.79 Entropy (bits)
179 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 71% of evaluated openers
1.16 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DONEE 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,460 Rank among openers
Opening with DONEE 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 3.66 average. It ranks #4,460 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
899
4 guesses
1,186
5 guesses
195
6 guesses
13
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

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
ENO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
46%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

DONEE can come back 98 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

510 answers
181 answers
174 answers
172 answers
141 answers
124 answers
98 answers
61 answers
60 answers
51 answers
50 answers
43 answers
39 answers
37 answers
36 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2O1N1E1E1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Try next

SLART SAINT SALTY LURID ARSON REAST

Strategy after playing DONEE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DONEE:

21% chance
Suggested:
SLART
8% chance
Suggested:
SLART
7% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.5% →
SLART 6.06 bits
7.6% →
SLART 5.32 bits
7.3% →
SLART 5.73 bits
7.2% →
SLART 5.21 bits
5.9% →
SAINT 5.36 bits
5.2% →
SALTY 4.52 bits
4.1% →
SALTY 4.22 bits
2.6% →
LURID 4.69 bits
2.5% →
ARSON 4.44 bits
2.1% →
REAST 4.22 bits

Research on DONEE

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

Optimal play

Opening with DONEE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #3,826 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 DONEE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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 DOHNEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, DONEE is a kind of receiver.

Synonyms beneficiary

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DONEE 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).