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

TRAVE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.5% of possible answers.

Open Solver with TRAVE Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /tɹeɪv/

Noun

A crossbeam.

Noun

A section formed by crossbeams.

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 TRAVE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TRAVE 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 85.9% of games, misses completely in 14.1%, and leaves about 106 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,228 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

T___E T in the 1st position and E in the 5th position _R__E R in the 2nd position and E in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in TRAVE.

First-turn measures

All four describe TRAVE 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.

5.34 Entropy (bits)
106 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 96% of evaluated openers
0.61 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TRAVE 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#3,228 Rank among openers
Opening with TRAVE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #3,228 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
78
3 guesses
914
4 guesses
1,151
5 guesses
193
6 guesses
16
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:
AERT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
39%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

TRAVE can come back 112 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

335 answers
152 answers
133 answers
132 answers
126 answers
116 answers
83 answers
78 answers
71 answers
67 answers
65 answers
65 answers
56 answers
45 answers
42 answers
39 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
28 answers
28 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
17 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1R1A1V4E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Try next

SOILY SONLY OLDEN HOIST CURRY CLASP

Strategy after playing TRAVE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TRAVE:

14% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
6% chance
Suggested:
SONLY
6% chance
Suggested:
OLDEN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

14.1% →
SOILY 5.71 bits
6.4% →
SONLY 5.06 bits
5.6% →
OLDEN 4.92 bits
5.6% →
HOIST 5.16 bits
5.3% →
SOILY 4.59 bits
4.9% →
SOILY 3.91 bits
3.5% →
CURRY 4.82 bits
3.3% →
CLASP 4.58 bits
3.0% →
MARRY 4.35 bits
2.8% →
SHIEL 4.45 bits

Research on TRAVE

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

Optimal play

Opening with TRAVE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,565 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,133 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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 TRAYV. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TRAVE is a kind of beam.

Synonyms traverse

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TRAVE sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).