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.

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.

Etymology

From Middle English patene, from Old French patene, from Latin patina, from Ancient Greek πατάνη (patánē). Doublet of patina, patine, and patena.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use PATEN in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.7% 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.

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

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

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:

277 answers
198 answers
163 answers
139 answers
124 answers
114 answers
103 answers
85 answers
74 answers
68 answers
63 answers
54 answers
49 answers
40 answers
38 answers
35 answers
31 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 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
6.8% →
CLARY 5.12 bits
5.8% →
SHORT 5.50 bits
5.2% →
BLARE 4.66 bits
4.8% →
OLDER 4.06 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.

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