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

DRAVE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

simple past of drive

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 DRAVE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DRAVE 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 82.6% of games, misses completely in 17.4%, and leaves about 141 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,880 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 DRAVE 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.

5.03 Entropy (bits)
141 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 85% of evaluated openers
0.92 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DRAVE 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
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#4,880 Rank among openers
Opening with DRAVE left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #4,880 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
74
3 guesses
891
4 guesses
1,141
5 guesses
236
6 guesses
11
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:
AER

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
38%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

DRAVE can come back 107 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

414 answers
206 answers
164 answers
132 answers
129 answers
112 answers
98 answers
77 answers
77 answers
64 answers
57 answers
51 answers
50 answers
42 answers
41 answers
34 answers
34 answers
28 answers
26 answers
26 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2R1A1V4E1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing DRAVE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DRAVE:

17% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
9% chance
Suggested:
TALON
7% chance
Suggested:
SLEET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.4%
SOILY 5.69 bits
8.7%
TALON 5.19 bits
6.9%
SLEET 5.35 bits
5.6%
SOILY 4.63 bits
5.4%
SEITY 4.09 bits
4.7%
TORUS 5.19 bits
4.1%
SLANT 4.65 bits
3.2%
CAROL 4.54 bits
3.2%
PRINT 4.07 bits
2.7%
CLEAN 4.42 bits

Research on DRAVE

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

Optimal play

Opening with DRAVE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #3,918 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 DRAVE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, 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

One syllable Say it DRAYV. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DRAVE 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).