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

BANCO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbæŋkəʊ̯/[ˈbæŋkʰəʊ̯]/ˈbæŋkɵʊ̯/

Adjective

Being or relating to a type of court involving a bench of judges, often an appeals court.

Noun

A bank, especially that of Venice; formerly used to indicate bank money, as distinguished from the current money when it has become depreciated.

“banco money”

Noun

In baccarat or chemin de fer, a bet on the banker hand.

Verb

In baccarat or chemin de fer, to bet an amount equal to the entire bankroll currently being offered by the banker.

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 BANCO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BANCO 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 80.2% of games, misses completely in 19.8%, and leaves about 186 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,316 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 BANCO 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.

4.67 Entropy (bits)
186 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 63% of evaluated openers
1.28 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BANCO 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,316 Rank among openers
Opening with BANCO left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,316 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
911
4 guesses
1,174
5 guesses
194
6 guesses
15
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:
ANO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
30%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

BANCO can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

469 answers
276 answers
258 answers
144 answers
132 answers
81 answers
72 answers
70 answers
58 answers
56 answers
53 answers
52 answers
50 answers
43 answers
32 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3A1N1C3O1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing BANCO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BANCO:

20% chance
Suggested:
SLIER
12% chance
Suggested:
STARE
11% chance
Suggested:
SOLER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.8%
SLIER 6.11 bits
11.6%
STARE 5.68 bits
10.9%
SOLER 5.22 bits
6.1%
SLYER 4.72 bits
5.6%
STIRE 5.12 bits
3.4%
SIREN 4.35 bits
3.0%
CRISE 5.04 bits
2.9%
GRISE 4.64 bits
2.4%
FLORA 4.45 bits
2.4%
PRASE 4.59 bits

Research on BANCO

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

Optimal play

Opening with BANCO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,475 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,232 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it BANGKOH.

Rhymes with PANKO SANKO

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BANCO 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.

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).