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

ROWED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɹəʊd//roːd/

Verb

simple past and past participle of row

Adjective

Formed into a row, or rows; having a specified number of rows.

“a twelve-rowed ear of corn”

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 ROWED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ROWED 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 80.8% of games, misses completely in 19.2%, and leaves about 177 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,183 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 ROWED 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.

4.77 Entropy (bits)
177 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 70% of evaluated openers
1.18 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ROWED 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,183 Rank among openers
Opening with ROWED solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,183 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
892
4 guesses
1,188
5 guesses
201
6 guesses
7
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:
EOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
30%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

ROWED can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

456 answers
310 answers
173 answers
128 answers
125 answers
108 answers
98 answers
87 answers
76 answers
62 answers
57 answers
47 answers
36 answers
33 answers
31 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1O1W4E1D2
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing ROWED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ROWED:

19% chance
Suggested:
SAINT
13% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
7% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.2%
SAINT 6.06 bits
13.1%
SLATE 5.80 bits
7.3%
SAINT 5.29 bits
5.4%
CEASE 4.73 bits
5.3%
SLANT 5.30 bits
4.5%
SALTY 4.54 bits
4.1%
SAINT 3.98 bits
3.7%
ARSON 4.23 bits
3.2%
SLANT 4.81 bits
2.6%
ANILE 4.57 bits

Research on ROWED

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

Optimal play

Opening with ROWED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,899 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 ROWED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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 ROHD.

Rhymes with TOWED ABODE ERODE SEWED MOWED

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ROWED is a kind of line or strip.

Synonyms course WORDS rowing quarrel

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ROWED 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.2 of 5).

In a sentence

They rowed up the river.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I rowed on the river yesterday.
© tatoeba.org contributor opalandwoof (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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).