Possible answer Not used yet B tier for first-turn info

SLAVE

SLAVE is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 94.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /sleɪv/

Noun

A person who is held in servitude as the property of another person, and whose labor (and often also whose body and life) is subject to the owner's volition and control.

Noun

A drudge; one who labors or is obliged (e.g. by prior contract) to labor like a slave with limited rights, e.g. an indentured servant.

Verb

To work as a slaver, to enslave people.

Verb

To work hard.

“I was slaving all day over a hot stove.”

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

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 SLAVE performs as a guess

SLAVE 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 85.5% of games, misses completely in 14.5%, and leaves about 122 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,631 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 SLAVE 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.

5.19 Entropy (bits)
122 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
94.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 91% of evaluated openers
0.76 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SLAVE 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
99.87% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#4,631 Rank among openers
Opening with SLAVE left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,631 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
78
3 guesses
852
4 guesses
1,218
5 guesses
184
6 guesses
18
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:
AELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
43%
All gray
14%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S L U M P
S L A V E

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches SLAVE in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

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

345 answers
226 answers
198 answers
124 answers
103 answers
100 answers
84 answers
69 answers
66 answers
64 answers
62 answers
49 answers
39 answers
38 answers
37 answers
36 answers
35 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1L1A1V4E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing SLAVE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SLAVE:

15% chance
Suggested:
COUNT
10% chance
Suggested:
DETER
8% chance
Suggested:
CARAT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.5%
COUNT 5.81 bits
9.5%
DETER 5.44 bits
8.3%
CARAT 4.95 bits
5.2%
GRICE 4.42 bits
4.3%
SNOUT 4.52 bits
4.2%
DILLY 4.83 bits
3.5%
CATER 4.31 bits
2.9%
HOIST 4.81 bits
2.8%
DRICE 4.21 bits
2.7%
LOWER 3.90 bits

Research on SLAVE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SLAVE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #3,940 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 SLAVE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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 SLAYV.

Rhymes with BRAVE GRAVE SHAVE CRAVE WAIVE

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SLAVE is a kind of actor or worker.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SLAVE sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 20 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Learner level
Appears in beginner learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level A2); among the first words English learners study.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 8, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 76 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.8 of 5).

In a sentence

The man is a slave.
© tatoeba.org contributor ddnktr (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The slave has to work.
© tatoeba.org contributor soridsolid (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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).