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

MOWED

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /məʊd//moːd//moʊd/

Verb

simple past and past participle of mow

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it MOHD.

Rhymes with TOWED ABODE ERODE SEWED ROWED

Related meanings

Synonyms mop

In a sentence

The lawn should be mowed.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The lawn needs to be mowed.
© tatoeba.org contributor mailohilohi (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use MOWED in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.8% 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 MOWED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MOWED 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 77.1% of games, misses completely in 22.9%, and leaves about 243 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,925 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 MOWED 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.

4.34 Entropy (bits)
243 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MOWED 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#6,925 Rank among openers
Opening with MOWED solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,925 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
824
4 guesses
1,253
5 guesses
214
6 guesses
8

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
30%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

MOWED can come back 87 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

545 answers
412 answers
185 answers
171 answers
121 answers
76 answers
72 answers
69 answers
56 answers
49 answers
43 answers
38 answers
36 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
23 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3O1W4E1D2
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing MOWED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MOWED:

23% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
17% chance
Suggested:
SLART
8% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.9% →
SAINT 6.17 bits
17.3% →
SLART 5.84 bits
7.8% →
SLART 5.31 bits
7.2% →
STAIR 4.62 bits
5.1% →
SALTY 4.55 bits
3.2% →
GEARE 4.58 bits
3.0% →
SNORE 4.25 bits
2.9% →
CLAMP 4.87 bits
2.3% →
DRAIN 4.57 bits
2.1% →
SHALT 5.13 bits

Research on MOWED

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

Optimal play

Opening with MOWED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,090 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 MOWED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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
MOWED 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.

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).