WAXEN
Yes, WAXEN was the Wordle answer on January 19, 2026 (Wordle #1675).
As an opener, it rules out about 90.7% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈwæksən/
- Adjective
-
Made of or covered with wax.
“a waxen tablet”
- Adjective
-
Of or pertaining to wax.
- Verb
-
alternative past participle of wax.
- Verb
-
plural simple present of wax
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: January 19, 2026 (#1675).
See the full page for that puzzle: January 19, 2026 (#1675).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How WAXEN performs as a guess
WAXEN is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 79.4% of games, misses completely in 20.6%, and leaves about 220 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,978 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.84 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe WAXEN 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How WAXEN 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches WAXEN in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
WAXEN can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for WAXEN; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing WAXEN
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to WAXEN.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing WAXEN:
Research on WAXEN
Game-tree analysis and word research for WAXEN, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with WAXEN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,415 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 WAXEN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.84; proven optimal play reaches 3.82. 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
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it WAKSUHN. Estimated pronunciation
This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.
Related meanings
Synonyms colorless
Opposites colorful
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- WAXEN 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.
In a sentence
Madame Tussauds is full of waxen images.
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).