Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

APNEA

APNEA is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈæp.ni.ə/

Noun

The cessation of breathing, most often in reference to transient instances thereof during sleep.

Alternative forms: apnoea, apnœa

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

Etymology

From a- + -pnea, from the New Latin apnoea, from the Ancient Greek ἄπνοια (ápnoia), formed from ἀ- (a-, “absence of”) + πνοή (pnoḗ, “breathing”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

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

In a sentence

Tom suffers from sleep apnea.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Email apnea happens while holding your breath when reading emails.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use APNEA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% 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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

Past Wordle answer

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How APNEA performs as a guess

APNEA is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 81.7% of games, misses completely in 18.3%, and leaves about 189 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,334 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 APNEA 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.

4.49 Entropy (bits)
189 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
92.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How APNEA 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
99.87% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#10,334 Rank among openers
Opening with APNEA left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.77 average. It ranks #10,334 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
768
4 guesses
1,229
5 guesses
275
6 guesses
27

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AEN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
29%
All gray
18%

Example solver route

R O A T E
L A D E N
A N N E X
A P N E A

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches APNEA in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

APNEA can come back 83 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

437 answers
287 answers
257 answers
182 answers
161 answers
131 answers
90 answers
72 answers
71 answers
50 answers
45 answers
43 answers
41 answers
37 answers
36 answers
28 answers
26 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1P3N1E1A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing APNEA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing APNEA:

18% chance
Suggested:
COURT
12% chance
Suggested:
TERSE
11% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.3% →
COURT 5.83 bits
12.0% →
TERSE 5.35 bits
10.8% →
SLART 5.27 bits
7.6% →
SLART 5.14 bits
6.8% →
SOLAR 4.09 bits
5.5% →
SOILY 4.77 bits
3.8% →
POUTY 4.94 bits
3.0% →
STAIR 4.37 bits
3.0% →
RIONE 4.47 bits
2.1% →
PRISE 4.51 bits

Research on APNEA

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

Optimal play

Opening with APNEA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,454 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 APNEA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.77; proven optimal play reaches 3.76. 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
APNEA sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (2.8 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).