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

BONDS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /bɑndz//bɒndz/

Noun

plural of bond

Noun

imprisonment, captivity

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of bond

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it BAHNDZ.

Rhymes with PONDS WANDS

Related meanings

Synonyms STICK tie alliance bail attachment attach

In a sentence

The money was stolen along with the bonds.
© tatoeba.org contributor Scott (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Bonds were issued to finance a war.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use BONDS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.8% 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.

BONDS in Connections

1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.

How BONDS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts BONDS 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 74.8% of games, misses completely in 25.2%, and leaves about 244 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,275 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 BONDS 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.

4.33 Entropy (bits)
244 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How BONDS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#4,275 Rank among openers
Opening with BONDS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,275 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
907
4 guesses
1,205
5 guesses
178
6 guesses
13

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
NOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
27%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

BONDS can come back 87 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

601 answers
326 answers
166 answers
137 answers
135 answers
125 answers
76 answers
69 answers
67 answers
65 answers
57 answers
43 answers
39 answers
34 answers
28 answers
28 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

B3O1N1D2S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing BONDS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing BONDS:

25% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
14% chance
Suggested:
STARE
7% chance
Suggested:
RAILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.2% →
CARLE 6.31 bits
13.7% →
STARE 5.72 bits
7.0% →
RAILE 5.40 bits
5.7% →
ARIEL 5.59 bits
5.7% →
TALER 5.19 bits
5.2% →
CARLE 4.75 bits
3.2% →
NAICE 4.44 bits
2.9% →
CARLE 5.17 bits
2.8% →
LIANE 4.42 bits
2.7% →
PEART 4.16 bits

Research on BONDS

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

Optimal play

Opening with BONDS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,001 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 BONDS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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
BONDS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 19 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 11, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 59 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.

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