SLAIN
SLAIN is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /sleɪ̯n//slæɪ̯n//slen/
- Verb
-
past participle of slay
- Noun
-
Those who have been killed.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SLAYN.
Rhymes with TRAIN BRAIN PLANE CHAIN SPAIN
Related meanings
Synonyms dead
Opposites ALIVE
In a sentence
He was slain in battle.
The dragon has been slain.
Use SLAIN in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 95.5% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How SLAIN performs as a guess
SLAIN is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 86.0% of games, misses completely in 14.0%, and leaves about 107 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #262 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.57 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe SLAIN 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How SLAIN 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches SLAIN in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SLAIN can come back 125 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for SLAIN; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing SLAIN
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SLAIN.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SLAIN:
Research on SLAIN
Game-tree analysis and word research for SLAIN, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SLAIN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #718 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.74 guesses at best and is rank #210 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.57, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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
- SLAIN sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.2 of 5).
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).