5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

ROUGH

Yes, ROUGH was the Wordle answer on June 1, 2025 (Wordle #1443).

As an opener, it rules out about 90.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with ROUGH Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɹʌf//ɹɐf//ɹʊf/

Adjective

Not smooth; uneven.

“rough hands”

Adjective

Approximate; hasty or careless; not finished.

“a rough copy”

Noun

The unmowed part of a golf course.

Noun

A rude fellow; a coarse bully; a rowdy.

Alternative forms: ruff

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: June 1, 2025 (#1443).

See the full page for that puzzle: June 1, 2025 (#1443).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How ROUGH performs as a guess

ROUGH is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 76.5% of games, misses completely in 23.5%, and leaves about 217 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,845 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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.

R___H R in the 1st position and H in the 5th position R__G_ R in the 1st position and G in the 4th position _O__H O in the 2nd position and H in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe ROUGH 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.

4.54 Entropy (bits)
217 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
90.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 54% of evaluated openers
1.41 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ROUGH 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#4,845 Rank among openers
Opening with ROUGH solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #4,845 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
919
4 guesses
1,151
5 guesses
219
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:
ORU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
27%
All gray
24%

Example solver route

R O A T E
C A N D Y
R O U G H

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches ROUGH in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

ROUGH can come back 98 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

559 answers
319 answers
156 answers
115 answers
113 answers
110 answers
105 answers
66 answers
64 answers
54 answers
50 answers
49 answers
47 answers
44 answers
36 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1O1U1G2H4
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Try next

SLATE SATED ALINE STILE LEANT DANSE

Strategy after playing ROUGH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ROUGH:

24% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
13% chance
Suggested:
SATED
7% chance
Suggested:
ALINE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.5% →
SLATE 6.31 bits
13.4% →
SATED 5.30 bits
6.6% →
ALINE 5.29 bits
4.8% →
STILE 5.02 bits
4.8% →
LEANT 4.50 bits
4.6% →
DANSE 4.54 bits
4.4% →
STALE 5.45 bits
2.8% →
SLANE 5.12 bits
2.7% →
PALET 4.62 bits
2.3% →
PLATE 4.50 bits

Research on ROUGH

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

Optimal play

Opening with ROUGH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,559 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,426 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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 RUHF.

Rhymes with STUFF TOUGH BLUFF FLUFF SNUFF

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ROUGH is a kind of site or prepare.

Synonyms roughly ROCKY HARSH CRUDE fierce approximate

Opposites smooth kind easy calm

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ROUGH sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 31 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Learner level
Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 6, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 53 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with touch (3.5 of 5).

In a sentence

We had a rough time.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Do not be so rough!
© tatoeba.org contributor SunnyMoon (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).