Possible answer Not used yet B tier for first-turn info

OAKEN

OAKEN is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 94.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈəʊk.ən/

Adjective

Made from the wood of the oak tree. Also in metaphorical uses, suggesting robustness.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 OAKEN performs as a guess

OAKEN is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 89.6% of games, misses completely in 10.4%, and leaves about 126 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,176 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 OAKEN 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.

4.89 Entropy (bits)
126 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
94.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 77% of evaluated openers
1.06 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How OAKEN 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,176 Rank among openers
Opening with OAKEN left 3 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 3.72 average. It ranks #8,176 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
816
4 guesses
1,211
5 guesses
248
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

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AENO

Feedback chances

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

Example solver route

R O A T E
C A M E O
O A K E N

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches OAKEN in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

OAKEN can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

246 answers
234 answers
221 answers
182 answers
169 answers
138 answers
110 answers
87 answers
78 answers
73 answers
66 answers
59 answers
47 answers
44 answers
41 answers
40 answers
39 answers
32 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1A1K5E1N1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing OAKEN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing OAKEN:

10% chance
Suggested:
SPILT
10% chance
Suggested:
TERSE
9% chance
Suggested:
ROOST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.4%
SPILT 5.60 bits
9.9%
TERSE 5.40 bits
9.3%
ROOST 5.23 bits
7.7%
SLART 5.26 bits
7.1%
SLART 5.40 bits
5.8%
SLEER 4.60 bits
4.6%
SATYR 4.02 bits
3.7%
PROSE 4.47 bits
3.3%
GLINT 4.54 bits
3.1%
CORAL 4.35 bits

Research on OAKEN

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

Optimal play

Opening with OAKEN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,592 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 OAKEN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72; proven optimal play reaches 3.71. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 OHKUHN. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

Synonyms WOODY

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
OAKEN 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

Place the deck of cards on the oaken table.
© tatoeba.org contributor adiante19 (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).