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

OWLER

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈaʊlɚ//ˈaʊlə/

Noun

The alder tree.

Noun

A smuggler of sheep or wool.

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 OWLER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts OWLER 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 86.6% of games, misses completely in 13.4%, and leaves about 140 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,654 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 OWLER 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.

4.85 Entropy (bits)
140 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 75% of evaluated openers
1.10 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How OWLER 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#5,654 Rank among openers
Opening with OWLER solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,654 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
62
3 guesses
886
4 guesses
1,167
5 guesses
221
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
2 vowels
Common:
ELOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
24%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

OWLER can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

319 answers
244 answers
183 answers
177 answers
170 answers
155 answers
119 answers
100 answers
81 answers
65 answers
58 answers
49 answers
38 answers
38 answers
37 answers
33 answers
30 answers
29 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

O1W4L1E1R1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing OWLER

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing OWLER:

13% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
10% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
8% chance
Suggested:
SAUNT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.4%
SAINT 6.03 bits
10.3%
SAINT 5.56 bits
7.7%
SAUNT 5.24 bits
7.5%
SAINT 5.32 bits
7.2%
SAINT 5.16 bits
6.5%
TEASE 4.71 bits
5.0%
SLATE 4.81 bits
4.2%
COAST 4.47 bits
3.4%
SAINT 3.90 bits
2.7%
COAST 4.43 bits

Research on OWLER

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

Optimal play

Opening with OWLER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,368 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 OWLER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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 OHLUR. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
OWLER sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).