5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer A tier for first-turn info

NEATS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 96.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with NEATS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of neat

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 NEATS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NEATS 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 89.6% of games, misses completely in 10.4%, and leaves about 90 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #771 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

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

N___S N in the 1st position and S in the 5th position N__T_ N in the 1st position and T in the 4th position _E__S E in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position NE_TS N in the 1st position, E in the 2nd position, T in the 4th position, and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in NEATS.

First-turn measures

All four describe NEATS 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.

5.45 Entropy (bits)
90 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 98% of evaluated openers
0.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NEATS 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#771 Rank among openers
Opening with NEATS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.59 average. It ranks #771 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
71
3 guesses
988
4 guesses
1,136
5 guesses
142
6 guesses
15
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
2 vowels
Common:
AENST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
90%
Green tile
29%
All gray
10%

Feedback distribution

NEATS can come back 107 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

246 answers
212 answers
150 answers
107 answers
93 answers
92 answers
81 answers
80 answers
73 answers
71 answers
66 answers
58 answers
57 answers
56 answers
55 answers
38 answers
36 answers
35 answers
33 answers
32 answers
32 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
22 answers
21 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1E1A1T1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Try next

COULD DROLE CAROL IRONY SOULY LARGE

Strategy after playing NEATS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NEATS:

10% chance
Suggested:
COULD
9% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
6% chance
Suggested:
CAROL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.4% →
COULD 5.68 bits
8.9% →
DROLE 5.31 bits
6.3% →
CAROL 5.23 bits
4.5% →
IRONY 4.87 bits
3.9% →
SOULY 4.64 bits
3.9% →
LARGE 4.61 bits
3.4% →
PROLE 4.71 bits
3.4% →
COURT 4.90 bits
3.1% →
DINER 4.37 bits
3.0% →
DOREE 4.21 bits

Research on NEATS

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

Optimal play

Opening with NEATS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,093 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 NEATS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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 NEETS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NEATS 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 sight (4.2 of 5).

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).