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

OVARY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈəʊvəɹi//ˈoʊvəɹi/

Noun

A female reproductive organ, often paired, that produces ova in most animals, and in mammals, secretes the hormones estrogen and progesterone.

“The male testicles are homologous to the female ovaries.”

Noun

The lower part of a pistil or carpel that bears ovules and ripens into fruit.

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 OVARY performs as a guess

OVARY 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 82.6% of games, misses completely in 17.4%, and leaves about 177 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,216 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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.

Useful pattern pages

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

First-turn measures

All four describe OVARY 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.

4.49 Entropy (bits)
177 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
92.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 51% of evaluated openers
1.46 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How OVARY 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#10,216 Rank among openers
Opening with OVARY left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,216 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
785
4 guesses
1,199
5 guesses
286
6 guesses
28
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:
AOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
33%
All gray
17%

Example solver route

R O A T E
B R A V O
O V A R Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches OVARY in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

OVARY can come back 84 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

414 answers
228 answers
227 answers
223 answers
154 answers
130 answers
129 answers
107 answers
71 answers
67 answers
66 answers
58 answers
37 answers
32 answers
30 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1V4A1R1Y4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing OVARY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing OVARY:

17% chance
Suggested:
STILE
10% chance
Suggested:
SEINE
10% chance
Suggested:
SONCE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.4%
STILE 6.14 bits
9.6%
SEINE 5.13 bits
9.6%
SONCE 5.16 bits
9.4%
SALET 5.38 bits
6.5%
STILE 5.15 bits
5.5%
SOOTE 4.43 bits
5.4%
SIDLE 4.62 bits
4.5%
TALER 4.51 bits
3.0%
SLANT 3.69 bits
2.8%
TALON 4.53 bits

Research on OVARY

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

Optimal play

Opening with OVARY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,108 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,301 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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

Three syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it OHVUREE.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, OVARY is a kind of endocrine.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
OVARY sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (2.0 of 5).

In a sentence

She had a bad infection and her ovary swelled up.
© tatoeba.org contributor orcrist (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The pollen tube grows down the style to reach the ovary during fertilization.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).