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

TOWNS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /taʊnz//tuːnz/

Noun

plural of town

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 TOWNS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TOWNS 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 75.8% of games, misses completely in 24.2%, and leaves about 213 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,608 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 TOWNS 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.

4.55 Entropy (bits)
213 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 55% of evaluated openers
1.40 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TOWNS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.66 Spread of game lengths
#2,608 Rank among openers
Opening with TOWNS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.66 means those games clustered within about 0.66 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,608 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
957
4 guesses
1,173
5 guesses
165
6 guesses
10
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
1 vowels
Common:
NOST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
26%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

TOWNS can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

575 answers
219 answers
184 answers
157 answers
140 answers
111 answers
107 answers
72 answers
62 answers
48 answers
41 answers
41 answers
37 answers
36 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1O1W4N1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing TOWNS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TOWNS:

24% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
9% chance
Suggested:
PARLE
8% chance
Suggested:
REACT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.2%
RAILE 6.30 bits
9.2%
PARLE 5.66 bits
7.8%
REACT 5.45 bits
6.6%
RAILE 5.35 bits
5.9%
CADRE 5.16 bits
4.7%
CARLE 4.90 bits
4.5%
SERAL 4.88 bits
3.0%
PAIRE 5.17 bits
2.6%
RAIKE 4.54 bits
2.0%
ARIEL 4.22 bits

Research on TOWNS

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

Optimal play

Opening with TOWNS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,549 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,286 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 TOWNZ.

Rhymes with DOWNS NOUNS GOWNS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TOWNS is a kind of designer or municipality.

Synonyms township

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TOWNS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 25 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.3 of 5).

In a sentence

You hate small towns, right?
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Most towns have an airport.
© tatoeba.org contributor carlosalberto (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).