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

SWANS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of swan

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of swan

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 SWANS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SWANS 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 71.0% of games, misses completely in 29.0%, and leaves about 301 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,854 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.81 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 SWANS 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.

3.98 Entropy (bits)
301 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 22% of evaluated openers
1.97 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SWANS 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.

3.81 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#11,854 Rank among openers
Opening with SWANS left 2 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 3.81 average. It ranks #11,854 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
738
4 guesses
1,237
5 guesses
316
6 guesses
22
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
1 vowels
Common:
ANS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
32%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

SWANS can come back 68 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

688 answers
358 answers
169 answers
157 answers
136 answers
100 answers
96 answers
82 answers
61 answers
53 answers
39 answers
39 answers
30 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
22 answers
18 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1W4A1N1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SWANS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SWANS:

29% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
15% chance
Suggested:
TALER
7% chance
Suggested:
LINER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.0%
TOILE 5.99 bits
15.1%
TALER 5.55 bits
7.1%
LINER 5.11 bits
6.6%
TOILE 5.12 bits
5.7%
TRICE 5.13 bits
4.2%
RUOTE 5.39 bits
4.0%
CANOE 4.58 bits
3.5%
GOIER 4.63 bits
2.6%
TRODE 4.94 bits
2.2%
PALET 3.62 bits

Research on SWANS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SWANS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #11,972 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.98 guesses at best and is rank #5,863 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.81, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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 SWAHNZ.

Rhymes with JOHNS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SWANS is a kind of bird or declare.

Synonyms RANGE cast roll SWEAR verify DRIFT

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SWANS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.4 of 5).

In a sentence

Not all swans are white.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
These baby swans are cute.
© 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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).