ROUGE

Meaning

Of a reddish pink colour.

• nounRed or pink makeup to add colour to the cheeks; blusher.
• nounAny reddish pink colour.
• nounA single point awarded when a team kicks the ball out of its opponent's end zone, or when a kicked ball becomes dead within the non-kicking team's end zone. Etymology uncertain; it is thought that in the early years of the sport, a red flag indicated that a single had been scored.

ROUGE as a word-puzzle answer

ROUGE is a 5-letter word with 3 vowels (O, U, E) and 2 consonants (R, G). Every letter is distinct, so it rarely punishes a clean opening guess.

It leans on high-frequency letters (R, O, E), so a strong vowel-and-common-consonant opener tends to light up quickly. There are no rare letters here, so it is a fair, mid-difficulty answer for the daily Classic puzzle.

ROUGE by the numbers

Across the 1,734 curated answers in the Wordocious bank, E appears in 50% of answers (the 1st most common letter), R appears in 37% of answers (the 3rd most common letter), O appears in 30% of answers (the 5th most common letter). 16 other answers share the opening “RO-”, so two green tiles up front still leave real guessing to do.

Difficulty: 2/5 — approachable, because its letters are common and no close neighbors compete with it.

Near misses

One letter away in the answer bank: ROUSE, ROUTE, ROUGH. Each of these turns four tiles green against ROUGE — the classic endgame squeeze where spending a guess on the differing letter beats burning attempts on hope.

Same letters, different order: ROGUE — yellow-heavy boards can be hiding this anagram instead.

Put it to use

Words like ROUGE are exactly what the daily puzzles throw at you. Warm up in Practice, race the clock in the Daily Challenge, or study the best starting words before your next run. New to the multi-board modes? The mode guides cover all nine.