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

HAWED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.3% of possible answers.

Open Solver with HAWED Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /hɔːd/

Verb

simple past and past participle of haw

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 HAWED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts HAWED 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 82.1% of games, misses completely in 17.9%, and leaves about 183 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,947 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

H___D H in the 1st position and D in the 5th position H__E_ H in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _A__D A in the 2nd position and D in the 5th position HA_ED H in the 1st position, A in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and D in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in HAWED.

First-turn measures

All four describe HAWED 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.

4.57 Entropy (bits)
183 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 56% of evaluated openers
1.38 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How HAWED 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.

3.74 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#8,947 Rank among openers
Opening with HAWED 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 3.74 average. It ranks #8,947 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
796
4 guesses
1,209
5 guesses
274
6 guesses
14
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:
AE

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
30%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

HAWED can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

425 answers
296 answers
241 answers
163 answers
152 answers
140 answers
122 answers
61 answers
52 answers
45 answers
45 answers
41 answers
40 answers
37 answers
36 answers
31 answers
26 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

H4A1W4E1D2
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Try next

SOILY RINSE SLART SENOR SONLY TOUCH

Strategy after playing HAWED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing HAWED:

18% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
12% chance
Suggested:
RINSE
10% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.9% →
SOILY 5.75 bits
12.5% →
RINSE 5.22 bits
10.2% →
SLART 5.32 bits
6.9% →
SLART 5.27 bits
6.4% →
SENOR 4.37 bits
5.9% →
SONLY 4.68 bits
5.1% →
TOUCH 5.15 bits
2.6% →
DIRGE 4.41 bits
2.2% →
DROIT 4.51 bits
1.9% →
LATER 3.23 bits

Research on HAWED

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

Optimal play

Opening with HAWED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,636 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 HAWED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74; proven optimal play reaches 3.73. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 HAWD. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, HAWED is a kind of bush or flap.

Synonyms hawthorn

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
HAWED 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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).