5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer C tier for first-turn info

PAWED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% of possible answers.

Open Solver with PAWED Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /pɔːd//pɔd//pɑd/

Verb

simple past and past participle of paw

Adjective

Having (a specified kind or number of) paws.

“a muddy-pawed puppy”

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 PAWED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PAWED 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 80.8% of games, misses completely in 19.2%, and leaves about 186 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,798 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

P___D P in the 1st position and D in the 5th position P__E_ P in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _A__D A in the 2nd position and D in the 5th position PA_ED P in the 1st position, A in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and D in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in PAWED.

First-turn measures

All four describe PAWED 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.

4.59 Entropy (bits)
186 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 58% of evaluated openers
1.35 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PAWED 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#6,798 Rank among openers
Opening with PAWED left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,798 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
838
4 guesses
1,221
5 guesses
223
6 guesses
12
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:
AE

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
33%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

PAWED can come back 92 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

456 answers
285 answers
242 answers
161 answers
141 answers
139 answers
66 answers
61 answers
54 answers
46 answers
44 answers
42 answers
40 answers
38 answers
35 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3A1W4E1D2
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Try next

COUNT RINSE SLART SENOR SONLY SOILY

Strategy after playing PAWED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PAWED:

19% chance
Suggested:
COUNT
12% chance
Suggested:
RINSE
10% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.2% →
COUNT 5.91 bits
12.0% →
RINSE 5.23 bits
10.2% →
SLART 5.40 bits
6.8% →
SLART 5.29 bits
5.9% →
SENOR 4.35 bits
5.9% →
SONLY 4.60 bits
2.8% →
SOILY 4.81 bits
2.6% →
URINE 4.44 bits
2.3% →
DROIT 4.60 bits
1.9% →
SIREN 4.30 bits

Research on PAWED

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

Optimal play

Opening with PAWED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,330 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 PAWED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70; proven optimal play reaches 3.69. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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

One syllable Say it PAWD.

Rhymes with BROAD FRAUD LAUDE SAWED JAWED

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, PAWED is a kind of foot or extremity.

Synonyms hand mitt

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PAWED 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.1 of 5).

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).