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

MAIDS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /meɪdz/

Noun

plural of maid

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 MAIDS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MAIDS 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 169 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,287 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 MAIDS 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.

4.67 Entropy (bits)
169 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 63% of evaluated openers
1.28 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MAIDS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,287 Rank among openers
Opening with MAIDS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,287 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
912
4 guesses
1,184
5 guesses
184
6 guesses
17
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:
AIS

Feedback chances

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

Feedback distribution

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

425 answers
253 answers
214 answers
161 answers
157 answers
121 answers
107 answers
96 answers
61 answers
57 answers
50 answers
46 answers
45 answers
43 answers
41 answers
33 answers
30 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1I1D2S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MAIDS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MAIDS:

18% chance
Suggested:
TONER
11% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
9% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.9%
TONER 5.95 bits
10.7%
ALERT 5.58 bits
9.0%
ROUET 5.44 bits
6.8%
RONTE 5.23 bits
6.6%
CLOTE 4.77 bits
5.1%
THALE 4.81 bits
4.5%
TRONE 5.00 bits
4.0%
DRONE 5.16 bits
2.6%
TRONE 4.04 bits
2.4%
ROUTE 4.93 bits

Research on MAIDS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MAIDS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,330 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 MAIDS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, 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 MAYDZ.

Rhymes with RAIDS AIDES FADES WADES JADES

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, MAIDS is a kind of woman or girl.

Synonyms maiden

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MAIDS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 86 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.2 of 5).

In a sentence

Two old maids live there.
© tatoeba.org contributor sharptoothed (CC BY 2.0 FR)
They fired all the maids.
© tatoeba.org contributor Ussis (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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).