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

BHANG

BHANG 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

Pronunciation: /ˈbæŋ/[ˈbæŋ]/ˈbeɪ̯ŋ/

Noun

A preparation made from the leaves and flowers of the cannabis plant, traditionally consumed in food or drink, especially during Hindu festivals such as Holi.

Noun

Cannabis or its preparations generally.

Alternative forms: bang, bangue, benj

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 BHANG performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BHANG 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 72.4% of games, misses completely in 27.6%, and leaves about 267 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,473 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 BHANG 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.

4.22 Entropy (bits)
267 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 34% of evaluated openers
1.72 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BHANG 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#7,473 Rank among openers
Opening with BHANG solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,473 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
832
4 guesses
1,244
5 guesses
224
6 guesses
9
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:
AN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
29%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

BHANG can come back 74 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

655 answers
321 answers
170 answers
144 answers
98 answers
96 answers
80 answers
76 answers
66 answers
62 answers
41 answers
39 answers
36 answers
35 answers
33 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3H4A1N1G2
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing BHANG

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BHANG:

28% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
14% chance
Suggested:
TALER
7% chance
Suggested:
SIREN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.6%
TOILE 6.06 bits
13.5%
TALER 5.61 bits
7.2%
SIREN 5.17 bits
6.1%
STIRE 5.14 bits
4.1%
DROLE 5.32 bits
4.0%
SOUTH 5.00 bits
3.4%
LANCE 4.56 bits
3.2%
CRISE 5.11 bits
2.8%
DROLE 4.91 bits
2.6%
TOUSE 4.69 bits

Research on BHANG

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

Optimal play

Opening with BHANG, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,092 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 BHANG can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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 BAHNG. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, BHANG is a kind of narcotic.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BHANG 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

Marc had heard of bhang, but he had never tried it.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The old travel diary mentioned bhang in a chapter about India.
© tatoeba.org contributor rul (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).