BONES
BONES is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /bəʊnz//boʊnz/
- Noun
-
plural of bone
- Noun
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A percussive folk musical instrument played as a pair in one hand, often made from bovine ribs.
- Verb
-
third-person singular simple present indicative of bone
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
How it sounds
One syllable Say it BOHNZ.
Rhymes with JONES LOANS ZONES TONES CONES
In a sentence
You have it in your bones.
I feel it in my bones.
Use BONES in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 94.1% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →BONES in Connections
3 recorded appearances in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #989
Reveal this appearance's category
BONES appeared in CALCIUM-BASED STRUCTURES (yellow group).
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· Puzzle #560
Reveal this appearance's category
BONES appeared in POLICE PROCEDURALS (blue group).
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· Puzzle #92
Reveal this appearance's category
BONES appeared in TV SHOWS (green group).
How BONES performs as a guess
Wordle accepts BONES 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 86.0% of games, misses completely in 14.0%, and leaves about 140 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,433 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe BONES 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How BONES 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Feedback distribution
BONES can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for BONES; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing BONES
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BONES.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BONES:
Research on BONES
Game-tree analysis and word research for BONES, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BONES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,797 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 BONES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.66; proven optimal play reaches 3.65. 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
- BONES sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 21 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 5, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 95 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.6 of 5).
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).