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

MEOWS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of meow

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of meow

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

Related meanings

Synonyms mew

In a sentence

My cat meows all the time.
© tatoeba.org contributor Adelpa (CC BY 2.0 FR)
My cat meows a lot.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use MEOWS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.6% 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 MEOWS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MEOWS 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 82.2% of games, misses completely in 17.8%, and leaves about 199 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,700 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 MEOWS 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.

4.43 Entropy (bits)
199 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MEOWS 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,700 Rank among openers
Opening with MEOWS 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 3.76 average. It ranks #9,700 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
788
4 guesses
1,238
5 guesses
270
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
26%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

MEOWS can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

424 answers
381 answers
202 answers
186 answers
154 answers
141 answers
89 answers
70 answers
55 answers
42 answers
41 answers
38 answers
36 answers
34 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3E1O1W4S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing MEOWS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MEOWS:

18% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
16% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
8% chance
Suggested:
SAULT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.8% →
TRAIL 5.94 bits
16.0% →
RAILE 5.40 bits
8.5% →
SAULT 5.38 bits
7.8% →
TONAL 5.03 bits
6.5% →
REATE 4.54 bits
5.9% →
STAIR 4.87 bits
3.7% →
CLARY 4.38 bits
2.9% →
VOTER 4.31 bits
2.3% →
CLUMP 4.60 bits
1.8% →
SHOOT 3.68 bits

Research on MEOWS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MEOWS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #7,917 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.86 guesses at best and is rank #3,271 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76; proven optimal play reaches 3.75. 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MEOWS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (4.8 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).