BRINE
Yes, BRINE was the Wordle answer on March 5, 2022 (Wordle #259).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈbɹaɪ̯n//ˈbɹaːn//ˈbɹɑ̟ɪ̯n/
- Noun
-
Salt water; water saturated or strongly impregnated with salt; a salt-and-water solution for pickling.
“Do you want a can of tuna in oil or in brine?”
- Noun
-
The sea or ocean; the water of the sea.
- Verb
-
To preserve food in a salt solution.
- Verb
-
To prepare and flavor food (especially meat) for cooking by soaking in a salt solution.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English brine, bryne, from Old English brīne, from Proto-West Germanic *brīnā, from Proto-Germanic *brīnǭ (“salt water, brine”) (compare Scots brime, West Frisian brein, Dutch brijn (“brine”), West Flemish brijne), of unknown ultimate origin, but probably from Proto-Indo-European *bʰreyH- (“to cut, maim”).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it BRYN.
Rhymes with SHINE SPINE STEIN ALIGN SWINE
Related meanings
Synonyms seawater saltwater
In a sentence
The olives are subsequently placed in brine.
Use BRINE in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 95.0% 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
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: March 5, 2022 (#259).
See the full page for that puzzle: March 5, 2022 (#259).
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 →How BRINE performs as a guess
BRINE is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 85.3% of games, misses completely in 14.7%, and leaves about 118 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #628 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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 BRINE 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 BRINE 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
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches BRINE in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
BRINE can come back 123 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 BRINE; 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 BRINE
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to BRINE.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing BRINE:
Research on BRINE
Game-tree analysis and word research for BRINE, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with BRINE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #633 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 #877 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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
- BRINE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with taste (3.7 of 5).
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).