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

WAGED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /weɪd͡ʒd/

Adjective

Receiving a wage.

Verb

simple past and past participle of wage

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 WAGED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WAGED 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 79.9% of games, misses completely in 20.1%, and leaves about 200 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,882 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.74 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 WAGED 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.

4.53 Entropy (bits)
200 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 54% of evaluated openers
1.42 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WAGED 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.

3.74 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#8,882 Rank among openers
Opening with WAGED solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.74 average. It ranks #8,882 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
60
3 guesses
771
4 guesses
1,259
5 guesses
255
6 guesses
9
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:
AE

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
33%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

WAGED can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

476 answers
299 answers
249 answers
162 answers
157 answers
147 answers
67 answers
49 answers
46 answers
42 answers
41 answers
39 answers
37 answers
31 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1G2E1D2
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing WAGED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WAGED:

20% chance
Suggested:
HOIST
13% chance
Suggested:
TORSE
10% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.1%
HOIST 5.84 bits
12.6%
TORSE 5.28 bits
10.5%
SLART 5.42 bits
6.8%
SLART 5.34 bits
6.6%
SENOR 4.36 bits
6.2%
SONLY 4.58 bits
2.8%
GUILT 4.80 bits
2.1%
DRICE 4.49 bits
1.9%
DROIT 4.54 bits
1.8%
RIONE 4.13 bits

Research on WAGED

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

Optimal play

Opening with WAGED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,154 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 WAGED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.74; proven optimal play reaches 3.72. 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 WAYJD.

Rhymes with CAGED RAGED PAGED

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WAGED is a kind of entertainer or agitation.

Synonyms pay card engage salary SHAKE earnings

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WAGED 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 (2.2 of 5).

In a sentence

The two countries waged a bloody war on each other.
© tatoeba.org contributor Teangloir (CC BY 2.0 FR)
During twenty years the Carthaginians waged war with the Romans.
© 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).