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

BENET

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /bɪˈnɛt//ˈbɛnət/

Verb

To catch in a net; ensnare.

Verb

To surround as by a net.

Noun

An exorcist, the third of the four lesser orders in the Roman Catholic church.

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 BENET performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BENET 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 76.4% of games, misses completely in 23.6%, and leaves about 205 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,084 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.70 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 BENET 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.

4.64 Entropy (bits)
205 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 61% of evaluated openers
1.31 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BENET 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.

3.70 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#7,084 Rank among openers
Opening with BENET left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.70 average. It ranks #7,084 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
857
4 guesses
1,203
5 guesses
222
6 guesses
20
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
41%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

BENET can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

561 answers
241 answers
176 answers
156 answers
116 answers
103 answers
78 answers
67 answers
66 answers
58 answers
53 answers
37 answers
37 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
30 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3E1N1E1T1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing BENET

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BENET:

24% chance
Suggested:
SORAL
10% chance
Suggested:
SORAL
7% chance
Suggested:
SITAR

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.6%
SORAL 5.89 bits
10.2%
SORAL 5.36 bits
7.4%
SITAR 5.05 bits
6.6%
ALONG 4.88 bits
4.9%
SOLAR 4.40 bits
4.3%
SORAL 4.99 bits
3.3%
RAISE 4.36 bits
2.8%
CLARY 5.05 bits
2.8%
SAUCY 4.30 bits
2.4%
ANISE 4.51 bits

Research on BENET

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

Optimal play

Opening with BENET, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,570 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with BENET can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.70; proven optimal play reaches 3.70. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 BEHNUHT.

Rhymes with TENET

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BENET sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).