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

OIRAN

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɔɪɹən/

Noun

A high-status courtesan in Japan.

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 OIRAN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts OIRAN 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 105 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,290 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 OIRAN 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.

5.27 Entropy (bits)
105 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 94% of evaluated openers
0.68 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How OIRAN 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#3,290 Rank among openers
Opening with OIRAN left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #3,290 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
75
3 guesses
951
4 guesses
1,091
5 guesses
207
6 guesses
26
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:
AINOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
92%
Green tile
27%
All gray
8%

Feedback distribution

OIRAN can come back 115 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

265 answers
202 answers
187 answers
132 answers
118 answers
112 answers
108 answers
83 answers
71 answers
70 answers
69 answers
59 answers
53 answers
51 answers
48 answers
48 answers
47 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1I1R1A1N1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing OIRAN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing OIRAN:

11% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
9% chance
Suggested:
SLEPT
8% chance
Suggested:
STOLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.2%
SLATE 5.71 bits
8.5%
SLEPT 5.64 bits
7.9%
STOLE 5.18 bits
5.6%
LEAST 4.58 bits
5.0%
STILE 5.43 bits
4.7%
SLEET 5.14 bits
4.5%
SOOTE 4.44 bits
3.5%
SALET 4.11 bits
3.0%
SALET 4.41 bits
2.9%
TRIPE 4.28 bits

Research on OIRAN

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

Optimal play

Opening with OIRAN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #3,073 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,350 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it YRUHN. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
OIRAN 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.

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).