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

BENTS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /bɛnts/

Noun

plural of bent

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

Related meanings

Synonyms set hang KNACK damaged resolute

Opposites ERECT

Use BENTS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.8% 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 BENTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BENTS 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 83.8% of games, misses completely in 16.2%, and leaves about 148 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,960 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 BENTS 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.

4.85 Entropy (bits)
148 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BENTS 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#2,960 Rank among openers
Opening with BENTS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #2,960 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
930
4 guesses
1,200
5 guesses
155
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ENST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
27%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

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

387 answers
282 answers
154 answers
133 answers
120 answers
114 answers
97 answers
93 answers
84 answers
82 answers
59 answers
46 answers
43 answers
42 answers
40 answers
40 answers
36 answers
28 answers
26 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3E1N1T1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing BENTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BENTS:

16% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
12% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
6% chance
Suggested:
SHALY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.2% →
CAROL 6.04 bits
11.8% →
ARIEL 5.08 bits
6.5% →
SHALY 5.10 bits
5.6% →
TAROT 5.09 bits
5.0% →
PARLE 5.00 bits
4.8% →
GROAN 5.20 bits
4.1% →
TALER 4.74 bits
3.9% →
CARLE 4.73 bits
3.5% →
ARIEL 4.57 bits
3.4% →
ROAST 4.61 bits

Research on BENTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BENTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,855 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #939 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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
BENTS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.5 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).