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

VEXED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 76.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with VEXED Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈvɛkst/

Adjective

annoyed, irritated or distressed

“She became more and more vexed as she struggled to cope with the demands of the job.”

Adjective

much debated, discussed or disputed

Verb

simple past and past participle of vex

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 VEXED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts VEXED 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 56.1% of games, misses completely in 43.9%, and leaves about 547 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,416 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.94 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.

V___D V in the 1st position and D in the 5th position V__E_ V in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _E__D E in the 2nd position and D in the 5th position

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

First-turn measures

All four describe VEXED 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.

3.22 Entropy (bits)
547 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
76.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 3% of evaluated openers
2.73 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How VEXED 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.

3.94 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#14,416 Rank among openers
Opening with VEXED 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 3.94 average. It ranks #14,416 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
568
4 guesses
1,270
5 guesses
463
6 guesses
19
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
2 vowels
Common:
E

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
56%
Green tile
28%
All gray
44%

Feedback distribution

VEXED can come back 56 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1041 answers
380 answers
162 answers
121 answers
117 answers
70 answers
53 answers
46 answers
33 answers
32 answers
29 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
15 answers
14 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers
5 answers
5 answers
4 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

V4E1X8E1D2
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 17 points

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

Try next

COAST SLART SOLAR DROIT SONAR RAINE

Strategy after playing VEXED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing VEXED:

44% chance
Suggested:
COAST
16% chance
Suggested:
SLART
7% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

43.9% →
COAST 5.82 bits
16.0% →
SLART 5.61 bits
6.8% →
SOLAR 4.63 bits
5.1% →
SLART 4.95 bits
4.9% →
DROIT 4.93 bits
2.9% →
SONAR 4.59 bits
2.2% →
RAINE 4.27 bits
1.9% →
STEER 4.13 bits
1.4% →
SLART 4.17 bits
1.3% →
ROANY 3.84 bits

Research on VEXED

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

Optimal play

Opening with VEXED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.93 guesses and ranks #14,293 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 VEXED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.94; proven optimal play reaches 3.93. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 VEHKST.

Rhymes with SEXED

Related meanings

Synonyms annoyed harassed hard difficult troubled

Opposites easy

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
VEXED sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).