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

DENCH

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /dɛnt͡ʃ/

Adjective

Excellent; impressive; awesome.

Adjective

Well-built, muscular, attractive.

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 DENCH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts DENCH 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 80.1% of games, misses completely in 19.9%, and leaves about 199 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,015 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 DENCH 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.

4.59 Entropy (bits)
199 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 58% of evaluated openers
1.36 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How DENCH 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.66 Spread of game lengths
#3,015 Rank among openers
Opening with DENCH left 1 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 3.64 average. It ranks #3,015 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
919
4 guesses
1,201
5 guesses
168
6 guesses
7
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
1 vowels
Common:
EN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
26%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

DENCH can come back 92 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

472 answers
385 answers
164 answers
113 answers
111 answers
96 answers
84 answers
72 answers
70 answers
61 answers
58 answers
57 answers
46 answers
39 answers
36 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

D2E1N1C3H4
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing DENCH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing DENCH:

20% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR
16% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR
7% chance
Suggested:
SAINT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.9%
SOLAR 6.00 bits
16.2%
SOLAR 5.44 bits
6.9%
SAINT 5.38 bits
4.8%
SLART 4.92 bits
4.7%
SORAL 5.47 bits
4.0%
OATER 4.56 bits
3.5%
ALOUD 4.95 bits
3.0%
RAILE 4.79 bits
2.9%
STAIR 4.79 bits
2.6%
TARSE 4.94 bits

Research on DENCH

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

Optimal play

Opening with DENCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #3,918 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 DENCH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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 DEHNCH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
DENCH 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).