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

ANIMA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈænɪmə//ˈænəmə/

Noun

The soul or animating principle of a living thing, especially as contrasted with the animus.

Noun

The inner self (not the external persona) of a person that is in touch with the unconscious as opposed to the persona.

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

Use ANIMA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.3% 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

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 ANIMA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ANIMA 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 74.5% of games, misses completely in 25.5%, and leaves about 278 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,218 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.77 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 ANIMA 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.

4.09 Entropy (bits)
278 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ANIMA 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.

3.77 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#10,218 Rank among openers
Opening with ANIMA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,218 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
47
3 guesses
786
4 guesses
1,214
5 guesses
280
6 guesses
25

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
24%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

ANIMA can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

606 answers
425 answers
178 answers
160 answers
139 answers
99 answers
77 answers
60 answers
57 answers
52 answers
50 answers
44 answers
29 answers
29 answers
25 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1N1I1M3A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing ANIMA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ANIMA:

26% chance
Suggested:
SOREL
18% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
7% chance
Suggested:
TILDE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.5%
SOREL 6.10 bits
17.9%
TARSE 5.66 bits
7.5%
TILDE 5.04 bits
6.7%
CORSE 5.23 bits
5.9%
CRUET 5.02 bits
4.2%
REACT 4.37 bits
3.2%
SOLER 4.93 bits
2.5%
CONEY 4.11 bits
2.4%
GORSE 4.06 bits
2.2%
CARLE 4.78 bits

Research on ANIMA

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

Optimal play

Opening with ANIMA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,319 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,738 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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
ANIMA sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).