Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

GUANO

Yes, GUANO was the Wordle answer on March 27, 2023 (Wordle #646).

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɡwɑːnəʊ/

Noun

Dung from a sea bird or from a bat.

Noun

Coccothrinax borhidiana, a variety of palm tree indigenous to Cuba.

Verb

To fertilize (land) with guano.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: March 27, 2023 (#646).

See the full page for that puzzle: March 27, 2023 (#646).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How GUANO performs as a guess

GUANO is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 82.9% of games, misses completely in 17.1%, and leaves about 177 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,899 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 GUANO 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.

4.71 Entropy (bits)
177 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 66% of evaluated openers
1.24 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GUANO 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#6,899 Rank among openers
Opening with GUANO left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,899 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
867
4 guesses
1,148
5 guesses
248
6 guesses
23
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
3 vowels
Common:
ANOU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
32%
All gray
17%

Example solver route

R O A T E
G U A N O

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches GUANO in 2 guesses.

Feedback distribution

GUANO can come back 103 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

407 answers
300 answers
268 answers
200 answers
97 answers
95 answers
86 answers
76 answers
72 answers
61 answers
42 answers
33 answers
32 answers
29 answers
28 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2U1A1N1O1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing GUANO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GUANO:

17% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
13% chance
Suggested:
TALER
11% chance
Suggested:
TORSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.1%
SLIER 5.90 bits
12.6%
TALER 5.55 bits
11.3%
TORSE 5.30 bits
8.4%
STIRE 5.07 bits
4.1%
SMILE 4.46 bits
4.0%
CRISE 4.95 bits
3.6%
DINER 4.77 bits
3.2%
CAROL 4.40 bits
3.0%
SIREN 4.47 bits
2.6%
LANCE 4.53 bits

Research on GUANO

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

Optimal play

Opening with GUANO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,255 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 GUANO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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 GWAHNOH.

Rhymes with LLANO GRANO

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, GUANO is a kind of organic.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
GUANO sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

Tom became convinced that mining guano would be a lucrative business venture.
© tatoeba.org contributor ddnktr (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).