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

CANGS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of cang

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 CANGS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CANGS 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 80.0% of games, misses completely in 20.0%, and leaves about 179 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,297 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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 CANGS 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.

4.66 Entropy (bits)
179 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 63% of evaluated openers
1.28 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CANGS 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.

3.62 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.66 Spread of game lengths
#2,297 Rank among openers
Opening with CANGS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.66 means those games clustered within about 0.66 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #2,297 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
951
4 guesses
1,191
5 guesses
147
6 guesses
12
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.45 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ANS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
28%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

CANGS can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

472 answers
244 answers
239 answers
136 answers
117 answers
106 answers
86 answers
82 answers
72 answers
53 answers
48 answers
43 answers
40 answers
38 answers
37 answers
34 answers
33 answers
30 answers
29 answers
26 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CANGS:

20% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
10% chance
Suggested:
STIRE
10% chance
Suggested:
ALERT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.0%
TOILE 6.09 bits
10.3%
STIRE 5.48 bits
10.1%
ALERT 5.60 bits
5.8%
ROUET 5.33 bits
5.0%
PORTE 4.72 bits
4.5%
THALE 4.82 bits
3.6%
TRICE 5.10 bits
3.5%
PROLE 5.09 bits
3.1%
DROLE 5.11 bits
2.2%
RUOTE 4.48 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1N1G2S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

The science of CANGS

What game-tree analysis and word research measure about CANGS — each figure with what it means.

Optimal play

Opening with CANGS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses — rank #3,219 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best — rank #1,120 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62 — at or below the proven-optimal 3.68 only 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) — not the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

One syllable — say it KANGZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.