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

ELAIN

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

eleoptene

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

Etymology

From Welsh Elain. Alternatively, a variant of English Elaine.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use ELAIN in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.0% 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 ELAIN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ELAIN 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 90.4% of games, misses completely in 9.6%, and leaves about 96 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,077 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 ELAIN 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.

5.45 Entropy (bits)
96 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ELAIN 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#2,077 Rank among openers
Opening with ELAIN left 2 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 3.62 average. It ranks #2,077 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
84
3 guesses
946
4 guesses
1,121
5 guesses
180
6 guesses
21

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AEILN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
90%
Green tile
32%
All gray
10%

Feedback distribution

ELAIN can come back 122 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

265 answers
228 answers
133 answers
116 answers
116 answers
89 answers
82 answers
76 answers
70 answers
69 answers
64 answers
60 answers
60 answers
57 answers
47 answers
42 answers
40 answers
39 answers
36 answers
31 answers
27 answers
27 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1L1A1I1N1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing ELAIN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ELAIN:

11% chance
Suggested:
SOREE
10% chance
Suggested:
SHORT
6% chance
Suggested:
SATYR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.1% →
SOREE 5.54 bits
9.6% →
SHORT 5.73 bits
5.6% →
SATYR 4.86 bits
4.9% →
SHIRT 5.12 bits
4.9% →
TARSE 4.53 bits
3.7% →
TRIDE 4.56 bits
3.4% →
SHART 4.78 bits
3.2% →
STURE 4.09 bits
2.9% →
SETER 4.16 bits
2.9% →
STONY 4.63 bits

Research on ELAIN

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

Optimal play

Opening with ELAIN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,648 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 ELAIN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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
ELAIN 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).