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

PADRE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpɑdɹeɪ/

Noun

A military clergyman.

Noun

A Roman Catholic or Anglican priest.

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Italian padre, Spanish padre, or Portuguese padre (“priest”), which are from Latin pater (“father”). Doublet of ayr, faeder, father, pater, and père.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it PADRAY.

Related meanings

Synonyms father

Use PADRE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.4% 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.

PADRE in Connections

1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.

How PADRE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PADRE 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 85.8% of games, misses completely in 14.2%, and leaves about 111 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,078 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 PADRE 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.

5.34 Entropy (bits)
111 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PADRE 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
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#1,078 Rank among openers
Opening with PADRE left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.60 average. It ranks #1,078 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
80
3 guesses
980
4 guesses
1,108
5 guesses
169
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AER

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
40%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

PADRE can come back 122 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

338 answers
164 answers
150 answers
132 answers
132 answers
122 answers
112 answers
77 answers
65 answers
62 answers
57 answers
53 answers
48 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
34 answers
29 answers
29 answers
27 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3A1D2R1E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing PADRE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PADRE:

14% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
7% chance
Suggested:
SLANT
6% chance
Suggested:
BETEL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.2% →
SOILY 5.68 bits
6.9% →
SLANT 5.29 bits
6.3% →
BETEL 5.06 bits
5.5% →
GROUT 5.01 bits
5.5% →
TENOR 3.93 bits
5.1% →
SOILY 4.76 bits
4.7% →
SONLY 4.58 bits
3.2% →
COAST 4.42 bits
2.7% →
WOULD 4.65 bits
2.6% →
SLANT 4.71 bits

Research on PADRE

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

Optimal play

Opening with PADRE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.60 guesses and ranks #131 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 PADRE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.60, 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
PADRE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).