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

BANIA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of bunnia.

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

How it sounds

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

Use BANIA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.8% 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

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 BANIA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BANIA 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 74.0% of games, misses completely in 26.0%, and leaves about 267 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,611 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 BANIA 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.

4.18 Entropy (bits)
267 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BANIA 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
#10,611 Rank among openers
Opening with BANIA 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 #10,611 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
768
4 guesses
1,216
5 guesses
298
6 guesses
20

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
31%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

BANIA can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

621 answers
317 answers
269 answers
159 answers
147 answers
85 answers
75 answers
65 answers
64 answers
42 answers
34 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3A1N1I1A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing BANIA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BANIA:

26% chance
Suggested:
SOREL
13% chance
Suggested:
REAST
11% chance
Suggested:
STILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.0% →
SOREL 6.08 bits
13.3% →
REAST 5.59 bits
11.3% →
STILE 5.31 bits
6.7% →
TORSE 4.80 bits
6.2% →
TORSE 5.25 bits
3.6% →
SOGER 4.45 bits
3.1% →
GRACE 4.59 bits
2.7% →
ROUET 4.63 bits
2.7% →
STOLE 4.73 bits
1.8% →
COURE 4.27 bits

Research on BANIA

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

Optimal play

Opening with BANIA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,211 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,144 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 3.79, 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
BANIA sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word few players will have met in print.

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).