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

BANTZ

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative spelling of bants.

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 BANTZ performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BANTZ 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 73.3% of games, misses completely in 26.7%, and leaves about 268 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,030 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

First-turn measures

All four describe BANTZ 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.

4.07 Entropy (bits)
268 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 26% of evaluated openers
1.88 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BANTZ 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#10,030 Rank among openers
Opening with BANTZ left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #10,030 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
777
4 guesses
1,276
5 guesses
250
6 guesses
17
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:
ANT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
28%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

BANTZ can come back 64 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

634 answers
288 answers
238 answers
180 answers
131 answers
111 answers
82 answers
72 answers
65 answers
63 answers
58 answers
40 answers
31 answers
29 answers
24 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
20 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3A1N1T1Z10
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 18 points

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

Strategy after playing BANTZ

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BANTZ:

27% chance
Suggested:
SOLER
12% chance
Suggested:
PEARL
10% chance
Suggested:
SHIER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.7%
SOLER 5.95 bits
12.1%
PEARL 5.38 bits
10.0%
SHIER 5.60 bits
7.6%
GOIER 5.14 bits
5.5%
SLYER 4.92 bits
4.7%
SLART 5.04 bits
3.5%
GRISE 4.72 bits
3.0%
DRICE 4.43 bits
2.7%
SHORE 4.70 bits
2.7%
ROULE 5.02 bits

Research on BANTZ

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

Optimal play

Opening with BANTZ, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,177 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #4,027 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, 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.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it BANTS.

Rhymes with PANTS AUNTS

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BANTZ 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.

In a sentence

The office bantz makes Mondays bearable.
© tatoeba.org contributor deniko (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).