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

RUANA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

An outer garment typical of the Andes region of Venezuela and Colombia, and resembling a poncho.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

From French ruana and its etymon, Spanish ruana (“woolen fabric or garment”), of disputed origin. Suggestions include Latin rūga (“wrinkle”), Quechua ruana (“textile”), and Chibcha ruana (“land of blankets”); see Wikipedia.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use RUANA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.3% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

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

How RUANA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts RUANA 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 184 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,568 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 RUANA 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.

4.53 Entropy (bits)
184 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RUANA 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#8,568 Rank among openers
Opening with RUANA left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,568 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
44
3 guesses
850
4 guesses
1,173
5 guesses
260
6 guesses
23

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
ANRU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
33%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

RUANA can come back 81 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

457 answers
295 answers
211 answers
135 answers
128 answers
126 answers
100 answers
88 answers
84 answers
75 answers
60 answers
58 answers
44 answers
37 answers
34 answers
33 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1U1A1N1A1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing RUANA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RUANA:

19% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
12% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
9% chance
Suggested:
SALET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.2% →
TOILE 6.09 bits
12.4% →
TOISE 5.46 bits
8.9% →
SALET 5.34 bits
5.7% →
TOILE 5.04 bits
5.4% →
TALER 4.62 bits
5.3% →
STILE 5.16 bits
4.2% →
SLIME 4.28 bits
3.7% →
SOCLE 5.10 bits
3.5% →
TRICE 4.43 bits
3.1% →
LANCE 4.47 bits

Research on RUANA

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

Optimal play

Opening with RUANA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,450 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,705 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
RUANA 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).