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

WEANS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of wean

Noun

plural of wean

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 WEANS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WEANS 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 86.2% of games, misses completely in 13.8%, and leaves about 133 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,050 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 WEANS 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.

5.00 Entropy (bits)
133 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 83% of evaluated openers
0.95 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WEANS 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,050 Rank among openers
Opening with WEANS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #5,050 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
65
3 guesses
878
4 guesses
1,195
5 guesses
197
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:
AENS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
32%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

WEANS can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

328 answers
264 answers
209 answers
149 answers
121 answers
100 answers
96 answers
73 answers
67 answers
63 answers
61 answers
60 answers
51 answers
50 answers
44 answers
35 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
28 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4E1A1N1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing WEANS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WEANS:

14% chance
Suggested:
MOULT
11% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
9% chance
Suggested:
CAROL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.8%
MOULT 5.59 bits
11.1%
TOILE 5.24 bits
8.8%
CAROL 5.24 bits
6.3%
HOIST 5.06 bits
5.1%
ALTER 4.75 bits
4.2%
PROLE 4.68 bits
4.0%
DETER 4.53 bits
3.1%
TONIC 4.99 bits
2.8%
LINER 4.54 bits
2.7%
TRICE 4.28 bits

Research on WEANS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WEANS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,496 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 WEANS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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

One syllable Say it WEENZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WEANS is a kind of deprive or alienate.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WEANS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.5 of 5).

In a sentence

Ziri weans his lambs early.
© tatoeba.org contributor Amastan (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).