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

WAITE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

Archaic spelling of wait.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

English surname for a watchman of Norman origin, from the verb wait. Sometimes confused with White or Wheat.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it WAYT.

Rhymes with GREAT STATE EIGHT PLATE SLATE

Use WAITE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.8% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How WAITE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WAITE 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 88.8% of games, misses completely in 11.2%, and leaves about 100 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,439 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 WAITE 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.

5.28 Entropy (bits)
100 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WAITE 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#5,439 Rank among openers
Opening with WAITE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,439 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
76
3 guesses
877
4 guesses
1,150
5 guesses
229
6 guesses
20

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AEIT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
42%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

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

266 answers
188 answers
177 answers
132 answers
106 answers
102 answers
89 answers
85 answers
81 answers
77 answers
77 answers
67 answers
58 answers
48 answers
43 answers
43 answers
42 answers
39 answers
34 answers
34 answers
34 answers
31 answers
30 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1I1T1E1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing WAITE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WAITE:

11% chance
Suggested:
SURLY
8% chance
Suggested:
SOLER
7% chance
Suggested:
SNARL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

11.2% →
SURLY 5.46 bits
7.9% →
SOLER 4.97 bits
7.4% →
SNARL 5.06 bits
5.5% →
ROUSE 4.57 bits
4.4% →
SONLY 4.56 bits
4.3% →
SONLY 4.74 bits
3.7% →
CRUST 5.30 bits
3.6% →
RENAL 4.71 bits
3.4% →
SETER 4.85 bits
3.2% →
SONLY 4.33 bits

Research on WAITE

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

Optimal play

Opening with WAITE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,348 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 WAITE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WAITE sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).