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

RAINS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɹeɪnz/

Noun

plural of rain

Noun

A rainy season; monsoon

“The rains came early this year.”

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of rain

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it RAYNZ.

Rhymes with GAINS LANES PAINS VEINS MAINS

Related meanings

Synonyms rainfall rainwater

In a sentence

I like when it rains.
© tatoeba.org contributor mccarras (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I like it when it rains.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use RAINS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.9% 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 RAINS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts RAINS 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 89.4% of games, misses completely in 10.6%, and leaves about 97 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #747 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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 RAINS 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)
97 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RAINS 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#747 Rank among openers
Opening with RAINS 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 3.59 average. It ranks #747 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
1,043
4 guesses
1,066
5 guesses
169
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AINRS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
34%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

RAINS can come back 110 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

253 answers
201 answers
155 answers
136 answers
116 answers
116 answers
95 answers
91 answers
79 answers
66 answers
60 answers
58 answers
54 answers
50 answers
42 answers
39 answers
37 answers
36 answers
34 answers
33 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1A1I1N1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing RAINS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RAINS:

11% chance
Suggested:
CLOTE
8% chance
Suggested:
CLOTE
7% chance
Suggested:
ALATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.6% →
CLOTE 5.77 bits
8.4% →
CLOTE 5.19 bits
6.5% →
ALATE 5.38 bits
5.7% →
SPELT 5.39 bits
4.9% →
TILDE 5.11 bits
4.9% →
TRACE 4.80 bits
4.0% →
CLOTE 4.49 bits
3.8% →
THALE 4.86 bits
3.3% →
COLEY 4.82 bits
2.8% →
STOPE 4.72 bits

Research on RAINS

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

Optimal play

Opening with RAINS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #710 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 RAINS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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
RAINS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 7 times 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).