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

OVINE

OVINE is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈəʊvaɪn//ˈoʊˌvaɪn/

Adjective

Of, being, pertaining to, or resembling a sheep; also, (not comparable) of an animal: from the genus Ovis.

Adjective

Resembling a sheep in character; acquiescent, easily influenced, passive, or willing to follow a leader blindly.

Noun

An animal from the genus Ovis; a sheep.

Noun

A person regarded as resembling a sheep in character; one who is acquiescent, easily influenced, passive, or willing to follow a leader blindly; a sheep.

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

Etymology

The adjective is borrowed from Late Latin ovīnus (“ovine”) + English -ine (suffix with the sense ‘of or relating to’ forming adjectives). Ovīnus is derived from Latin ovis (“sheep”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₂ówis (“sheep”), possibly from *h₂ew- (“to clothe oneself, dress; to be dressed”) in the sense of something that provides woollen clothing) + -īnus (suffix with the sense ‘of or relating to’ forming adjectives). By surface analysis, ove- + -ine.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use OVINE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.0% 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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 OVINE performs as a guess

OVINE is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 85.4% of games, misses completely in 14.6%, and leaves about 168 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,309 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 OVINE 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.

4.68 Entropy (bits)
168 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
93.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How OVINE 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#8,309 Rank among openers
Opening with OVINE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,309 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
67
3 guesses
793
4 guesses
1,226
5 guesses
243
6 guesses
22

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
EINO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
33%
All gray
15%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L I N K
O P I N E
O V I N E

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches OVINE in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

OVINE can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

349 answers
328 answers
280 answers
166 answers
137 answers
93 answers
66 answers
62 answers
62 answers
59 answers
54 answers
54 answers
50 answers
50 answers
48 answers
39 answers
33 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1V4I1N1E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing OVINE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing OVINE:

15% chance
Suggested:
SLART
14% chance
Suggested:
SERAL
12% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.6% →
SLART 5.90 bits
13.8% →
SERAL 5.44 bits
11.7% →
SLART 5.25 bits
7.0% →
SLART 5.25 bits
5.7% →
SALTY 4.83 bits
3.9% →
SLART 5.04 bits
2.8% →
ACORN 4.29 bits
2.6% →
SAULT 4.45 bits
2.6% →
SORAL 4.06 bits
2.5% →
RATEL 4.61 bits

Research on OVINE

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

Optimal play

Opening with OVINE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,224 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,537 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
OVINE 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).