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

CANSO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A love song sung by a troubadour

Alternative forms: canzo

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 CANSO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CANSO 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 85.0% of games, misses completely in 15.0%, and leaves about 128 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,149 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 CANSO 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.

5.09 Entropy (bits)
128 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 88% of evaluated openers
0.85 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CANSO 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#1,149 Rank among openers
Opening with CANSO 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 3.60 average. It ranks #1,149 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
65
3 guesses
976
4 guesses
1,153
5 guesses
149
6 guesses
11
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:
ANOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
32%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

CANSO can come back 107 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

356 answers
206 answers
206 answers
139 answers
127 answers
104 answers
78 answers
72 answers
64 answers
64 answers
57 answers
55 answers
50 answers
47 answers
40 answers
37 answers
35 answers
34 answers
32 answers
30 answers
28 answers
27 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1N1S1O1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing CANSO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CANSO:

15% chance
Suggested:
TILDE
9% chance
Suggested:
TRODE
9% chance
Suggested:
DEALT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.0%
TILDE 5.99 bits
8.7%
TRODE 5.20 bits
8.7%
DEALT 5.59 bits
5.9%
PLIER 5.35 bits
5.3%
TRIPE 4.52 bits
4.4%
TRIDE 5.16 bits
3.3%
PEART 4.73 bits
3.0%
MOIRE 4.27 bits
2.7%
FLORA 4.41 bits
2.7%
TRICE 4.90 bits

Research on CANSO

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

Optimal play

Opening with CANSO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,177 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.76 guesses at best and is rank #425 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KANSOH.

Rhymes with MANSO

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CANSO 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).