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

QUEAN

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /kwiːn/

Noun

A young woman, a girl; a daughter.

Noun

A woman, now especially an impudent or disreputable woman; a prostitute.

Alternative forms: quine, quene, queane

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 QUEAN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts QUEAN 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 85.6% of games, misses completely in 14.4%, and leaves about 190 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,027 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.84 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 QUEAN 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.

4.31 Entropy (bits)
190 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 39% of evaluated openers
1.64 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How QUEAN 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.

3.84 Avg guesses
99.75% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,027 Rank among openers
Opening with QUEAN left 6 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.84 average. It ranks #13,027 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
692
4 guesses
1,256
5 guesses
330
6 guesses
34
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
3 vowels
Common:
AENU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
25%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

QUEAN can come back 60 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

344 answers
342 answers
309 answers
226 answers
98 answers
97 answers
96 answers
91 answers
91 answers
77 answers
65 answers
54 answers
49 answers
34 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
10 answers
8 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Q10U1E1A1N1
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing QUEAN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing QUEAN:

14% chance
Suggested:
SIREE
14% chance
Suggested:
STORY
13% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.5%
SIREE 5.21 bits
14.4%
STORY 5.55 bits
13.0%
SLART 5.22 bits
9.5%
SLART 5.05 bits
4.1%
CRUST 5.13 bits
4.1%
SETER 4.76 bits
4.0%
TYING 4.63 bits
3.8%
SIREE 4.69 bits
3.8%
SURLY 3.83 bits
3.2%
GIANT 4.17 bits

Research on QUEAN

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

Optimal play

Opening with QUEAN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.87 guesses and ranks #13,110 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 QUEAN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.84, at or below the proven-optimal 3.87, 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

One syllable Say it KWEEN. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
QUEAN 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).