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

MARAN

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Proper noun

A family of non-Pama-Nyungan Australian Aboriginal prefixing languages spoken in southeastern Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

Proper noun

A surname.

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 MARAN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MARAN 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 77.5% of games, misses completely in 22.5%, and leaves about 215 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,289 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 MARAN 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.

4.46 Entropy (bits)
215 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 49% of evaluated openers
1.49 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MARAN 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#6,289 Rank among openers
Opening with MARAN left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.69 average. It ranks #6,289 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
863
4 guesses
1,188
5 guesses
225
6 guesses
15
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ANR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
31%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

MARAN can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

535 answers
299 answers
211 answers
174 answers
116 answers
113 answers
89 answers
70 answers
56 answers
54 answers
54 answers
46 answers
39 answers
36 answers
35 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1R1A1N1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MARAN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MARAN:

23% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
13% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
9% chance
Suggested:
TOISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.5%
TOILE 6.07 bits
12.6%
TOILE 5.17 bits
8.9%
TOISE 5.40 bits
7.3%
SLATE 5.66 bits
4.9%
STILE 4.75 bits
4.8%
TRACE 4.70 bits
3.7%
HOISE 4.86 bits
2.9%
SLIPE 4.91 bits
2.4%
SLATE 4.45 bits
2.3%
CLEAT 4.55 bits

Research on MARAN

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

Optimal play

Opening with MARAN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #7,950 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,472 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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 second syllable Say it MAHRAHN.

Rhymes with SALON BATON SPAWN KORAN PECAN

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MARAN 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).