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

VARDO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈvɑː.dəʊ//ˈvɑɹˌdoʊ/

Noun

A traditional horse-drawn wagon used by the Romani.

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 VARDO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts VARDO 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 80.7% of games, misses completely in 19.3%, and leaves about 187 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,234 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 VARDO 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.

4.56 Entropy (bits)
187 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 56% of evaluated openers
1.39 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How VARDO 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#8,234 Rank among openers
Opening with VARDO left 1 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 3.73 average. It ranks #8,234 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
814
4 guesses
1,192
5 guesses
263
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:
AOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
24%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

VARDO can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

459 answers
253 answers
230 answers
195 answers
148 answers
135 answers
114 answers
79 answers
60 answers
55 answers
43 answers
42 answers
37 answers
33 answers
31 answers
29 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

V4A1R1D2O1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing VARDO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing VARDO:

19% chance
Suggested:
STILE
11% chance
Suggested:
SLANE
10% chance
Suggested:
STOLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.3%
STILE 6.08 bits
10.7%
SLANE 5.66 bits
9.7%
STOLE 5.07 bits
8.2%
SIENT 5.32 bits
6.2%
SIENT 4.50 bits
5.7%
TRACE 4.83 bits
4.8%
STONE 4.52 bits
3.3%
TUILE 4.97 bits
2.5%
SHUTE 4.64 bits
2.3%
TONAL 4.44 bits

Research on VARDO

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

Optimal play

Opening with VARDO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,306 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 VARDO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it VAHRDOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
VARDO 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).