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

BINKY

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈbɪŋki/

Noun

A stuffed animal, pillow, blanket, or toy that a small child is more attached to than any other, and often sleeps with.

Noun

A baby's pacifier.

Verb

To perform a high hop, as when happy.

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

Etymology

* Onomatopoeic. Coined by either Dana Krempels or her sister in 1994 or 1995 for Ken Albin's "UNOFFICIAL PETBUNNY DICTIONARY", an enthusiast project organized on the PetBunny mailing list.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use BINKY in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 84.7% 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 BINKY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BINKY 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 65.1% of games, misses completely in 34.9%, and leaves about 364 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,398 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 BINKY 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.

3.87 Entropy (bits)
364 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
84.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BINKY 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,398 Rank among openers
Opening with BINKY left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,398 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
35
3 guesses
762
4 guesses
1,231
5 guesses
301
6 guesses
23

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
IN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
65%
Green tile
32%
All gray
35%

Feedback distribution

BINKY can come back 70 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

831 answers
238 answers
201 answers
186 answers
102 answers
95 answers
76 answers
65 answers
57 answers
57 answers
40 answers
33 answers
30 answers
26 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
9 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3I1N1K5Y4
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing BINKY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BINKY:

35% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
10% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
8% chance
Suggested:
SORAL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

34.9% →
TARSE 6.40 bits
10.0% →
TARSE 5.47 bits
8.4% →
SORAL 4.97 bits
7.8% →
SOARE 5.44 bits
4.3% →
RATEL 4.72 bits
4.0% →
ATONE 4.63 bits
3.2% →
OLATE 5.18 bits
2.7% →
CARLE 4.90 bits
2.4% →
CARTE 4.75 bits
2.4% →
OATER 5.18 bits

Research on BINKY

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

Optimal play

Opening with BINKY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,939 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,141 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79; proven optimal play reaches 3.78. 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
BINKY 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).