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

DOVER

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈdəʊ.və//ˈdoʊ.vɚ/

Proper noun

A town, civil parish (with a town council) and major port in Kent, England, the closest point to France (OS grid ref TR3141).

Proper noun

A sea area between this port and France.

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 DOVER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DOVER 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 80.0% of games, misses completely in 20.0%, and leaves about 186 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,200 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 DOVER 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.

4.70 Entropy (bits)
186 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 65% of evaluated openers
1.25 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DOVER 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,200 Rank among openers
Opening with DOVER 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 3.67 average. It ranks #5,200 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
879
4 guesses
1,200
5 guesses
202
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
30%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

DOVER can come back 105 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

475 answers
310 answers
185 answers
144 answers
135 answers
108 answers
86 answers
75 answers
71 answers
57 answers
51 answers
48 answers
36 answers
29 answers
23 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2O1V4E1R1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing DOVER

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DOVER:

20% chance
Suggested:
SLANT
13% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
8% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.0%
SLANT 5.99 bits
13.1%
SLATE 5.78 bits
7.8%
SAINT 5.29 bits
6.1%
TEASE 4.73 bits
5.7%
SLANT 5.26 bits
4.5%
SALTY 4.56 bits
3.6%
SAULT 3.89 bits
3.2%
SLANT 4.91 bits
3.0%
SAINT 4.31 bits
2.4%
ALINE 4.71 bits

Research on DOVER

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

Optimal play

Opening with DOVER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,496 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 DOVER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 DOHVUR.

Rhymes with ROVER

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DOVER sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 4 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

We took the cross-channel ferry from Dover to Calais.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The White Cliffs of Dover retreat by about one centimeter every year.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).