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

CONUS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkəʊnəs/

Noun

A cone.

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 CONUS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CONUS 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 77.1% of games, misses completely in 22.9%, and leaves about 197 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,527 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 CONUS 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.

4.70 Entropy (bits)
197 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 65% of evaluated openers
1.25 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CONUS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#2,527 Rank among openers
Opening with CONUS left 2 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,527 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
956
4 guesses
1,157
5 guesses
167
6 guesses
15
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:
NOSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
28%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

CONUS can come back 101 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

543 answers
250 answers
146 answers
144 answers
124 answers
116 answers
89 answers
78 answers
62 answers
61 answers
50 answers
49 answers
48 answers
38 answers
35 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1N1U1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing CONUS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CONUS:

23% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
11% chance
Suggested:
STALE
6% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.9%
RAILE 6.18 bits
10.5%
STALE 5.78 bits
6.1%
ARIEL 5.41 bits
6.1%
TALER 5.17 bits
5.2%
PARLE 5.03 bits
4.9%
TALER 4.59 bits
3.7%
TIARE 5.27 bits
3.3%
RAILE 5.11 bits
2.6%
SALET 4.35 bits
2.6%
GLARE 4.47 bits

Research on CONUS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CONUS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,582 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,797 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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 KOHNUHS.

Rhymes with BONUS

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CONUS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

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).