DROWN
DROWN is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /dɹaʊn/[d̠͡ɹ̠˔ʷaʊn]/dɹuːn/
- Verb
-
To die from suffocation while immersed in water or other fluid.
“When I was a baby, I nearly drowned in the bathtub.”
- Verb
-
To kill by suffocating in water or another liquid.
“The car thief fought with an officer and tried to drown a police dog before being shot while escaping.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English drownen, drounen, drunen (“to drown”), of obscure and uncertain origin.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it DROWN.
Rhymes with BROWN CROWN CLOWN FROWN
Related meanings
Synonyms swim overwhelm
In a sentence
Where did you drown them?
I want to watch you drown.
Use DROWN in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 90.2% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How DROWN performs as a guess
DROWN is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 75.1% of games, misses completely in 24.9%, and leaves about 234 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,052 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe DROWN 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How DROWN 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches DROWN in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
DROWN can come back 107 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for DROWN; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing DROWN
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to DROWN.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing DROWN:
Research on DROWN
Game-tree analysis and word research for DROWN, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with DROWN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,099 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 DROWN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, 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.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- DROWN sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 5 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 65 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.6 of 5).
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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).