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

PATEN

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpætən/

Noun

The plate used to hold the host during the Eucharist.

Noun

Any shallow dish found in an archaeological site.

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 PATEN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PATEN 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 88.4% of games, misses completely in 11.6%, and leaves about 102 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #409 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.58 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 PATEN 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.

5.37 Entropy (bits)
102 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 96% of evaluated openers
0.58 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PATEN 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.

3.58 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#409 Rank among openers
Opening with PATEN left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.58 average. It ranks #409 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
87
3 guesses
981
4 guesses
1,131
5 guesses
143
6 guesses
11
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:
AENT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
35%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

PATEN can come back 126 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

276 answers
197 answers
163 answers
139 answers
124 answers
113 answers
103 answers
85 answers
74 answers
68 answers
63 answers
54 answers
48 answers
40 answers
38 answers
34 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3A1T1E1N1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing PATEN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PATEN:

12% chance
Suggested:
COULD
8% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
7% chance
Suggested:
CLARY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.6%
COULD 5.66 bits
8.3%
DROLE 5.10 bits
6.9%
CLARY 5.12 bits
5.9%
SHORT 5.50 bits
5.2%
BLARE 4.66 bits
4.8%
OLDER 4.04 bits
4.3%
SOILY 4.91 bits
3.6%
SOILY 4.27 bits
3.1%
CRISE 4.67 bits
2.9%
SEINE 4.53 bits

Research on PATEN

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

Optimal play

Opening with PATEN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.60 guesses and ranks #141 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 PATEN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.58, 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.

How it sounds

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

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PATEN 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).