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

ANION

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈænˌaɪ.ən//ˈænˌaɪ.ɑn//ˈænˌaɪ.ɒn/

Noun

A negatively charged ion.

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 ANION performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ANION 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 84.6% of games, misses completely in 15.4%, and leaves about 218 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,406 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 ANION 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.

4.38 Entropy (bits)
218 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 43% of evaluated openers
1.57 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ANION 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.76 Spread of game lengths
#11,406 Rank among openers
Opening with ANION left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.76 means those games clustered within about 0.76 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,406 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
772
4 guesses
1,163
5 guesses
320
6 guesses
39
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

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AINO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
28%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

ANION can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

464 answers
365 answers
294 answers
167 answers
147 answers
69 answers
65 answers
60 answers
56 answers
54 answers
53 answers
49 answers
43 answers
37 answers
34 answers
24 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1N1I1O1N1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing ANION

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ANION:

20% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
15% chance
Suggested:
SLEER
12% chance
Suggested:
STORE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.5%
TARSE 5.55 bits
15.4%
SLEER 5.83 bits
12.4%
STORE 5.23 bits
7.0%
TILDE 5.02 bits
6.2%
TRUCE 5.05 bits
2.9%
LEAST 4.43 bits
2.7%
TRUCE 4.49 bits
2.5%
CORAL 4.62 bits
2.4%
TRAIL 4.64 bits
2.3%
TRUCE 4.32 bits

Research on ANION

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

Optimal play

Opening with ANION, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #11,787 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.98 guesses at best and is rank #5,895 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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

Three syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it ANYAWN.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ANION is a kind of ion.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ANION 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.

In a sentence

An oxyanion is an anion that contains the element oxygen.
© tatoeba.org contributor LinaTamazight (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).