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

MIAOW

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

UK spelling of meow.

Verb

UK spelling of meow.

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 MIAOW performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MIAOW 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 84.2% of games, misses completely in 15.8%, and leaves about 189 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,816 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.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

First-turn measures

All four describe MIAOW 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.

4.42 Entropy (bits)
189 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 46% of evaluated openers
1.53 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MIAOW 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
100% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#9,816 Rank among openers
Opening with MIAOW solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #9,816 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
793
4 guesses
1,201
5 guesses
281
6 guesses
25
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
3 vowels
Common:
AIO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
31%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

MIAOW can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

374 answers
306 answers
282 answers
225 answers
201 answers
128 answers
66 answers
65 answers
54 answers
46 answers
46 answers
44 answers
36 answers
28 answers
28 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3I1A1O1W4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing MIAOW

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MIAOW:

16% chance
Suggested:
SLEER
13% chance
Suggested:
TALER
12% chance
Suggested:
CRUSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.8%
SLEER 5.80 bits
12.9%
TALER 5.53 bits
11.9%
CRUSE 5.43 bits
9.5%
TRINE 5.36 bits
8.5%
STURE 4.98 bits
5.4%
SLYER 4.34 bits
2.8%
CAIRN 4.42 bits
2.7%
TONAL 4.50 bits
2.3%
DROLE 4.53 bits
1.9%
TRODE 4.15 bits

Research on MIAOW

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

Optimal play

Opening with MIAOW, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,519 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.90 guesses at best and is rank #4,159 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, 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 first syllable Say it MYOW. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

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

Synonyms meow mew

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MIAOW 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.

In a sentence

Lions don't miaow, they roar.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).