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

BANTS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Banter, particularly among men.

Alternative forms: bantz

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 BANTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BANTS 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 81.2% of games, misses completely in 18.8%, and leaves about 157 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,051 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 BANTS 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.

4.83 Entropy (bits)
157 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 74% of evaluated openers
1.11 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BANTS 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.66 Spread of game lengths
#2,051 Rank among openers
Opening with BANTS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.66 means those games clustered within about 0.66 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #2,051 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
968
4 guesses
1,173
5 guesses
152
6 guesses
11
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
1 vowels
Common:
ANST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
29%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

BANTS can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

447 answers
205 answers
176 answers
150 answers
134 answers
107 answers
85 answers
84 answers
70 answers
65 answers
62 answers
57 answers
49 answers
47 answers
41 answers
41 answers
37 answers
30 answers
26 answers
25 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3A1N1T1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing BANTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BANTS:

19% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
9% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
7% chance
Suggested:
SPILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.8%
DROLE 6.11 bits
8.6%
DROLE 5.39 bits
7.4%
SPILE 5.39 bits
6.3%
THEIR 5.36 bits
5.6%
GOIER 5.15 bits
4.5%
PLIER 4.59 bits
3.6%
ROUET 4.57 bits
3.5%
CHARE 4.71 bits
2.9%
ALERT 4.88 bits
2.7%
GRICE 4.78 bits

Research on BANTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BANTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,895 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.76 guesses at best and is rank #461 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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

One syllable Say it BANTS. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BANTS 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).