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

ROUTS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɹaʊts/[ɹʌʊts]

Noun

plural of rout

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of rout

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 ROUTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ROUTS 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 83.8% of games, misses completely in 16.2%, and leaves about 135 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,230 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 ROUTS 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.

5.07 Entropy (bits)
135 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 87% of evaluated openers
0.88 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ROUTS 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#1,230 Rank among openers
Opening with ROUTS 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 3.60 average. It ranks #1,230 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
1,011
4 guesses
1,099
5 guesses
162
6 guesses
20
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:
ORSTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
27%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

ROUTS can come back 107 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

385 answers
242 answers
159 answers
130 answers
109 answers
92 answers
92 answers
90 answers
75 answers
73 answers
58 answers
47 answers
45 answers
44 answers
43 answers
35 answers
32 answers
30 answers
28 answers
28 answers
28 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1O1U1T1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing ROUTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ROUTS:

16% chance
Suggested:
LIANE
10% chance
Suggested:
CADIE
7% chance
Suggested:
PLANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.2%
LIANE 6.14 bits
10.2%
CADIE 5.31 bits
6.7%
PLANE 5.58 bits
5.5%
LEANT 5.22 bits
4.6%
ALINE 5.41 bits
3.9%
CLADE 4.47 bits
3.9%
CRANE 4.47 bits
3.8%
ANILE 4.61 bits
3.2%
TREAT 4.56 bits
3.1%
LEANT 4.89 bits

Research on ROUTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with ROUTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,756 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.77 guesses at best and is rank #729 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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 ROWTS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ROUTS is a kind of crowd or defeat.

Synonyms root mob EXPEL rabble

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ROUTS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).