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

CAINS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of cain

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 CAINS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CAINS 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 84.2% of games, misses completely in 15.8%, and leaves about 130 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #578 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.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe CAINS 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.

5.13 Entropy (bits)
130 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 89% of evaluated openers
0.81 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CAINS 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#578 Rank among openers
Opening with CAINS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.59 average. It ranks #578 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
1,029
4 guesses
1,081
5 guesses
163
6 guesses
13
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
2 vowels
Common:
AINS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
36%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

CAINS can come back 110 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

376 answers
222 answers
177 answers
136 answers
121 answers
101 answers
84 answers
72 answers
59 answers
57 answers
51 answers
49 answers
43 answers
40 answers
38 answers
36 answers
35 answers
35 answers
34 answers
34 answers
31 answers
27 answers
27 answers
22 answers
22 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1I1N1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing CAINS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CAINS:

16% chance
Suggested:
ROULE
9% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
7% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.8%
ROULE 5.89 bits
9.4%
ALERT 5.55 bits
7.5%
ROUET 5.50 bits
5.7%
TILDE 5.19 bits
5.1%
TALER 4.64 bits
4.3%
THALE 4.82 bits
3.5%
MOREE 4.83 bits
3.0%
TRODE 4.90 bits
2.5%
TONER 4.30 bits
2.4%
PROLE 5.04 bits

Research on CAINS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CAINS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,074 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 CAINS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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 KAYNZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CAINS 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.

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).