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

MAYAN

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈmaɪən//ˈmɑːjən//ˈmɛːjən/

Adjective

Of or relating to the Maya people of Central America and southeastern Mexico.

Noun

A Maya person.

Proper noun

The language of the Maya people.

Proper noun

An age from 502 to 501 ± 2.0 million years ago, a subdivision of the Cambrian.

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

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it MYUHN.

Rhymes with SCION

Related meanings

Synonyms maya

In a sentence

Tom and Mary visited the Mayan ruins.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He's interested in Mayan prophecies.
© tatoeba.org contributor Spamster (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use MAYAN in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 86.9% 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 MAYAN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MAYAN 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 69.0% of games, misses completely in 31.0%, and leaves about 313 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,035 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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 MAYAN 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.

4.02 Entropy (bits)
313 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MAYAN 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.

3.78 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#11,035 Rank among openers
Opening with MAYAN left 1 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 3.78 average. It ranks #11,035 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
42
3 guesses
742
4 guesses
1,269
5 guesses
281
6 guesses
19

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
69%
Green tile
27%
All gray
31%

Feedback distribution

MAYAN can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

739 answers
264 answers
221 answers
175 answers
121 answers
89 answers
86 answers
62 answers
61 answers
57 answers
53 answers
42 answers
33 answers
27 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1Y4A1N1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing MAYAN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MAYAN:

31% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
11% chance
Suggested:
SLART
9% chance
Suggested:
TOISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.0% →
TOISE 6.05 bits
11.1% →
SLART 5.46 bits
9.3% →
TOISE 5.49 bits
7.3% →
STOLE 4.64 bits
5.1% →
STILE 4.72 bits
3.7% →
CRUET 4.70 bits
3.6% →
ROUSE 5.10 bits
2.6% →
SLATE 4.38 bits
2.6% →
SOWER 4.60 bits
2.4% →
SLART 3.62 bits

Research on MAYAN

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

Optimal play

Opening with MAYAN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,713 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.96 guesses at best and is rank #5,559 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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
MAYAN sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).