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

ROVES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.0% of possible answers.

Open Solver with ROVES Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of rove

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 ROVES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ROVES 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 85.3% of games, misses completely in 14.7%, and leaves about 143 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,552 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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___S R in the 1st position and S in the 5th position R__E_ R in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _O__S O in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position RO_ES R in the 1st position, O in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and S in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe ROVES 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.

4.85 Entropy (bits)
143 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 75% of evaluated openers
1.10 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ROVES 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#7,552 Rank among openers
Opening with ROVES solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,552 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
69
3 guesses
818
4 guesses
1,206
5 guesses
243
6 guesses
18
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:
EORS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
28%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

ROVES can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

348 answers
269 answers
184 answers
155 answers
118 answers
113 answers
113 answers
102 answers
101 answers
89 answers
68 answers
58 answers
47 answers
45 answers
34 answers
30 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1O1V4E1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

PAINT DEALT SAULT TRAIN TRACE SLANT

Strategy after playing ROVES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ROVES:

15% chance
Suggested:
PAINT
11% chance
Suggested:
DEALT
8% chance
Suggested:
SAULT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.7% →
PAINT 5.70 bits
11.3% →
DEALT 5.52 bits
7.8% →
SAULT 5.24 bits
6.5% →
TRAIN 5.20 bits
5.0% →
TRACE 4.77 bits
4.8% →
SLANT 4.92 bits
4.8% →
HOTLY 3.86 bits
4.3% →
IRATE 3.33 bits
4.3% →
TALON 5.01 bits
3.7% →
ACTOR 3.94 bits

Research on ROVES

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

Optimal play

Opening with ROVES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,368 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 ROVES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71; proven optimal play reaches 3.71. 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 ROHVZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ROVES is a kind of go.

Synonyms RANGE cast roll swan DRIFT STRAY

Familiarity and learning

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