5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

SAUNA

Yes, SAUNA was the Wordle answer on December 23, 2024 (Wordle #1283).

As an opener, it rules out about 91.2% of possible answers.

Open Solver with SAUNA Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈsɔː.nə//ˈsaʊ.nə//ˈsɑː.nə/

Noun

A room or a house designed for heat sessions.

“The hotel has a sauna in the basement.”

Noun

The act of using a sauna.

“John had a sauna after his swim.”

Verb

To use a sauna.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

Used once

Past Wordle answer: December 23, 2024 (#1283).

See the full page for that puzzle: December 23, 2024 (#1283).

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

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How SAUNA performs as a guess

SAUNA is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 76.7% of games, misses completely in 23.3%, and leaves about 209 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,870 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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.

S___A S in the 1st position and A in the 5th position S__N_ S in the 1st position and N in the 4th position _A__A A in the 2nd position and A in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe SAUNA 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.

4.47 Entropy (bits)
209 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
91.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 50% of evaluated openers
1.47 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SAUNA 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#7,870 Rank among openers
Opening with SAUNA left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #7,870 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
853
4 guesses
1,191
5 guesses
236
6 guesses
24
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

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
ANSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
39%
All gray
23%

Example solver route

R O A T E
N A S A L
S A U N A

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches SAUNA in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

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

554 answers
258 answers
151 answers
148 answers
140 answers
136 answers
89 answers
82 answers
66 answers
63 answers
51 answers
46 answers
45 answers
43 answers
38 answers
34 answers
29 answers
27 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
16 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1A1U1N1A1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Try next

TOILE TRACE TRICE LINER PLIER DROLE

Strategy after playing SAUNA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SAUNA:

23% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
11% chance
Suggested:
TRACE
6% chance
Suggested:
TRICE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.3% →
TOILE 5.94 bits
10.9% →
TRACE 5.52 bits
6.4% →
TRICE 4.74 bits
6.2% →
LINER 5.10 bits
5.9% →
PLIER 5.17 bits
5.7% →
DROLE 4.65 bits
3.7% →
TROPE 5.28 bits
3.5% →
THALE 4.42 bits
2.8% →
CLOTE 5.04 bits
2.7% →
TRODE 4.60 bits

Research on SAUNA

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

Optimal play

Opening with SAUNA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,144 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 SAUNA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, 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.

How it sounds

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

Rhymes with FAUNA

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SAUNA is a kind of room.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SAUNA 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.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 10, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 91 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.

In a sentence

Are you in the sauna?
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)
It's like a sauna in here.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).