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

SAWED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

simple past and past participle of saw

Verb

simple past of see

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 SAWED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SAWED 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 84.2% of games, misses completely in 15.8%, and leaves about 141 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,724 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 SAWED 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.

4.91 Entropy (bits)
141 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 78% of evaluated openers
1.04 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SAWED 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#6,724 Rank among openers
Opening with SAWED left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #6,724 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
72
3 guesses
784
4 guesses
1,292
5 guesses
194
6 guesses
11
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:
AES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
42%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

SAWED can come back 96 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

375 answers
236 answers
188 answers
137 answers
135 answers
127 answers
118 answers
73 answers
59 answers
59 answers
58 answers
55 answers
51 answers
45 answers
36 answers
35 answers
33 answers
33 answers
32 answers
30 answers
26 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1A1W4E1D2
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SAWED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SAWED:

16% chance
Suggested:
COUNT
10% chance
Suggested:
TRINE
8% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.8%
COUNT 5.89 bits
9.9%
TRINE 5.19 bits
7.9%
TRAIL 5.20 bits
5.8%
GLARE 4.70 bits
5.7%
RIONE 4.05 bits
5.3%
CARAT 4.07 bits
5.0%
SPILT 4.40 bits
3.1%
HOIST 4.76 bits
2.5%
DIRGE 4.44 bits
2.5%
TRIPE 4.31 bits

Research on SAWED

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

Optimal play

Opening with SAWED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,500 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 SAWED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70; proven optimal play reaches 3.68. 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 SAWD.

Rhymes with BROAD FRAUD LAUDE JAWED PAWED

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SAWED is a kind of saying or tool.

Synonyms proverb

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SAWED 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.

In a sentence

I sawed off my own arm.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)
He sawed off the branch he was sitting on.
© 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).