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

BANYA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbɑːnjə/

Noun

A type of steam bath, popular in Russia (and in some parts of Alaska as well).

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

Etymology

From Russian ба́ня f (bánja). Doublet of bagnio, bain, and balaneion.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

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

Rhymes with TANIA

Use BANYA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 85.8% 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 BANYA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BANYA 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 68.5% of games, misses completely in 31.5%, and leaves about 337 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,585 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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 BANYA 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.

3.83 Entropy (bits)
337 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BANYA 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#11,585 Rank among openers
Opening with BANYA left 4 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 3.80 average. It ranks #11,585 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
36
3 guesses
719
4 guesses
1,295
5 guesses
282
6 guesses
18

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
26%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

BANYA can come back 68 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

751 answers
329 answers
212 answers
203 answers
123 answers
92 answers
69 answers
65 answers
60 answers
41 answers
38 answers
34 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
6 answers
6 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3A1N1Y4A1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing BANYA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BANYA:

32% chance
Suggested:
TOISE
14% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
9% chance
Suggested:
TOISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.5% →
TOISE 6.11 bits
13.8% →
SLATE 5.65 bits
8.9% →
TOISE 5.44 bits
8.5% →
SIDLE 4.74 bits
5.2% →
CLOTE 4.72 bits
3.9% →
GRISE 4.55 bits
2.9% →
TOILE 5.04 bits
2.7% →
TRICE 4.39 bits
2.5% →
SLART 3.62 bits
1.7% →
SLART 4.26 bits

Research on BANYA

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

Optimal play

Opening with BANYA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #12,099 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.99 guesses at best and is rank #6,099 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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
BANYA 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).