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

MIAOU

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative spelling of miaow.

Verb

Alternative spelling of miaow.

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 MIAOU performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MIAOU 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 91.4% of games, misses completely in 8.6%, and leaves about 155 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,641 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 MIAOU 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.

4.60 Entropy (bits)
155 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 58% of evaluated openers
1.35 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MIAOU 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
99.83% Solved within six
0.75 Spread of game lengths
#10,641 Rank among openers
Opening with MIAOU left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.75 means those games clustered within about 0.75 of a guess of the 3.78 average. It ranks #10,641 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
778
4 guesses
1,176
5 guesses
306
6 guesses
31
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
4 vowels
Common:
AIOU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
91%
Green tile
31%
All gray
9%

Feedback distribution

MIAOU can come back 82 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

282 answers
265 answers
213 answers
205 answers
201 answers
199 answers
139 answers
71 answers
67 answers
62 answers
50 answers
50 answers
48 answers
44 answers
39 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
24 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3I1A1O1U1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MIAOU

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MIAOU:

12% chance
Suggested:
TALER
11% chance
Suggested:
SNORE
9% chance
Suggested:
STARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.9%
TALER 5.48 bits
11.2%
SNORE 5.16 bits
9.0%
STARE 4.72 bits
8.6%
STEER 5.63 bits
8.5%
NURSE 5.24 bits
8.4%
TRINE 5.19 bits
5.9%
SLYER 4.30 bits
3.0%
CRUET 4.49 bits
2.8%
CAIRN 4.41 bits
2.6%
TONAL 4.44 bits

Research on MIAOU

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

Optimal play

Opening with MIAOU, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,782 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,688 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 3.78, 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 MYYOO. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, MIAOU is a kind of cry or utter.

Synonyms meow mew

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MIAOU 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).