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

OATER

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈoʊ.tɚ/

Noun

A movie or television show about cowboy or frontier life; a western movie.

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

Etymology

From oat + -er (“Variety -er”). First use appears c. 1945-50, alluding to the fodder for horses, which are common in the movies.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use OATER in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.9% 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 OATER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts OATER 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 91.5% of games, misses completely in 8.5%, and leaves about 74 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,009 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 OATER 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.

5.63 Entropy (bits)
74 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How OATER 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#1,009 Rank among openers
Opening with OATER 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 3.60 average. It ranks #1,009 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
98
3 guesses
949
4 guesses
1,121
5 guesses
168
6 guesses
17

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AEORT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
92%
Green tile
31%
All gray
8%

Feedback distribution

OATER can come back 130 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

202 answers
147 answers
138 answers
112 answers
101 answers
77 answers
76 answers
72 answers
69 answers
68 answers
65 answers
64 answers
63 answers
62 answers
61 answers
55 answers
49 answers
47 answers
42 answers
38 answers
38 answers
33 answers
31 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1A1T1E1R1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 5 points

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

Strategy after playing OATER

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing OATER:

8% chance
Suggested:
SLIMY
6% chance
Suggested:
SEINE
6% chance
Suggested:
COLON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

8.5% →
SLIMY 5.50 bits
6.2% →
SEINE 5.44 bits
5.8% →
COLON 4.95 bits
4.7% →
CLASP 5.10 bits
4.2% →
SLADE 4.59 bits
3.2% →
SONLY 4.15 bits
3.2% →
SEINE 4.50 bits
3.0% →
SHUNT 4.74 bits
2.9% →
CURLY 4.33 bits
2.9% →
CROWD 4.05 bits

Research on OATER

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

Optimal play

Opening with OATER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.61 guesses and ranks #369 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 OATER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.61, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT).