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

ROWAN

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɹəʊ.ən//ˈɹaʊ.ən//ˈɹoʊ.ən/

Noun

Sorbus aucuparia, the European rowan.

Noun

Any of various small deciduous trees or shrubs of genus Sorbus, belonging to the rose family, with pinnate leaves, corymbs of white flowers, and usually with orange-red berries.

Alternative forms: roan

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 ROWAN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ROWAN 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 84.5% of games, misses completely in 15.5%, and leaves about 157 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,861 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe ROWAN 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.

4.81 Entropy (bits)
157 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 72% of evaluated openers
1.14 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ROWAN 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#4,861 Rank among openers
Opening with ROWAN left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after 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 #4,861 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
922
4 guesses
1,145
5 guesses
216
6 guesses
16
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:
ANOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
26%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

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

368 answers
298 answers
223 answers
151 answers
143 answers
109 answers
108 answers
87 answers
86 answers
53 answers
37 answers
36 answers
36 answers
35 answers
35 answers
34 answers
34 answers
31 answers
26 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1O1W4A1N1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing ROWAN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ROWAN:

16% chance
Suggested:
STILE
13% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
9% chance
Suggested:
SUITE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.5%
STILE 6.13 bits
12.6%
SLATE 5.66 bits
9.4%
SUITE 5.33 bits
6.4%
STARE 4.60 bits
6.0%
SUITE 5.19 bits
4.6%
STILE 5.11 bits
4.5%
STOLE 4.42 bits
3.7%
SAINE 4.32 bits
3.6%
TRIDE 4.23 bits
2.2%
PETAL 4.42 bits

Research on ROWAN

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

Optimal play

Opening with ROWAN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,426 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 ROWAN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it ROHUHN.

Rhymes with COHEN ROHAN LOWEN ROWEN KOHEN

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ROWAN is a kind of tree.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ROWAN sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

In a sentence

Mary had rowan trees in her backyard.
© tatoeba.org contributor letsgolanguages (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Jam can be made from rowan berries.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (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).