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

MOOED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /muːd//mʉːd/

Verb

simple past and past participle of moo

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 MOOED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MOOED 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 75.1% of games, misses completely in 24.9%, and leaves about 270 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,954 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 MOOED 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.

4.22 Entropy (bits)
270 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 34% of evaluated openers
1.73 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MOOED 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
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#9,954 Rank among openers
Opening with MOOED left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #9,954 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
48
3 guesses
780
4 guesses
1,230
5 guesses
277
6 guesses
18
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
3 vowels
Common:
EO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
39%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

MOOED can come back 80 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

592 answers
442 answers
192 answers
103 answers
99 answers
84 answers
80 answers
72 answers
62 answers
52 answers
43 answers
39 answers
37 answers
37 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3O1O1E1D2
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MOOED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MOOED:

25% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
19% chance
Suggested:
SLART
8% chance
Suggested:
STAIR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.9%
SAINT 6.16 bits
18.6%
SLART 5.84 bits
8.1%
STAIR 4.64 bits
4.3%
STARY 4.62 bits
4.2%
SLANT 4.93 bits
3.5%
BARON 5.16 bits
3.4%
GEARE 4.60 bits
3.0%
CLAMP 4.90 bits
2.6%
DRAIN 4.68 bits
2.2%
SLART 3.94 bits

Research on MOOED

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

Optimal play

Opening with MOOED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #8,970 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with MOOED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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

One syllable Say it MOOD. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

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

Synonyms low

Familiarity and learning

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

In a sentence

Look at that: the cow mooed.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).