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

CENTS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /sɛnts//sɛn/

Noun

plural of cent

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it SEHNTS.

Rhymes with TENTS RENTS VENTS GENTS DENTS

Related meanings

Synonyms PENNY

In a sentence

That's just my two cents.
© tatoeba.org contributor megamanenm (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Do you have five cents?
© tatoeba.org contributor menaud (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use CENTS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.8% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No 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.

CENTS in Connections

1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.

How CENTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CENTS 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 86.3% of games, misses completely in 13.7%, and leaves about 123 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,812 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 CENTS 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.

5.10 Entropy (bits)
123 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CENTS 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#1,812 Rank among openers
Opening with CENTS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #1,812 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
62
3 guesses
975
4 guesses
1,136
5 guesses
165
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ENST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
30%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

CENTS can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

326 answers
278 answers
132 answers
115 answers
108 answers
108 answers
89 answers
79 answers
79 answers
77 answers
72 answers
54 answers
46 answers
45 answers
45 answers
42 answers
41 answers
38 answers
32 answers
31 answers
31 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3E1N1T1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing CENTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CENTS:

14% chance
Suggested:
MOLAR
12% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
6% chance
Suggested:
SHALY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.7% →
MOLAR 5.75 bits
11.7% →
RAILE 5.29 bits
5.5% →
SHALY 5.02 bits
4.8% →
TRIAL 5.28 bits
4.5% →
DRAIN 5.22 bits
4.5% →
SPARE 4.83 bits
3.7% →
LEARE 4.76 bits
3.3% →
TALER 4.82 bits
3.3% →
ARIEL 4.58 bits
3.2% →
ROAST 4.65 bits

Research on CENTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CENTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,310 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.75 guesses at best and is rank #362 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 3.64, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CENTS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 23 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.4 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).