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

NOUNS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /naʊnz/

Noun

plural of noun

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of noun

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 NOUNS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NOUNS 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 70.1% of games, misses completely in 29.9%, and leaves about 297 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,768 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 NOUNS 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.

4.02 Entropy (bits)
297 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 23% of evaluated openers
1.93 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NOUNS 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
99.79% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#10,768 Rank among openers
Opening with NOUNS left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.78 average. It ranks #10,768 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
751
4 guesses
1,270
5 guesses
274
6 guesses
16
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
2 vowels
Common:
NOSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
70%
Green tile
26%
All gray
30%

Feedback distribution

NOUNS can come back 66 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

710 answers
285 answers
179 answers
148 answers
138 answers
130 answers
67 answers
64 answers
58 answers
55 answers
49 answers
41 answers
38 answers
37 answers
35 answers
34 answers
29 answers
26 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1O1U1N1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing NOUNS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NOUNS:

30% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
12% chance
Suggested:
PLATE
8% chance
Suggested:
TALER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.9%
CARLE 6.17 bits
12.0%
PLATE 5.77 bits
7.5%
TALER 5.19 bits
6.2%
MARLE 4.72 bits
5.8%
LINER 5.08 bits
5.5%
RAILE 4.86 bits
2.8%
GRATE 4.83 bits
2.7%
REACT 4.07 bits
2.4%
TRACE 4.94 bits
2.3%
GLARE 4.23 bits

Research on NOUNS

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

Optimal play

Opening with NOUNS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #12,076 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 NOUNS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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 NOWNZ.

Rhymes with TOWNS DOWNS GOWNS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, NOUNS is a kind of substantive.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NOUNS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

Nouns end in the letter O.
© tatoeba.org contributor Miktsoanit (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Take out all the nouns from the text.
© 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).