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

ENATE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A relative whose relation is traced only through female members of the family.

“A great-grandmother is an enate if she is your mother’s mother's mother.”

Noun

Any maternal female relative.

Adjective

Related to someone by female connections.

Adjective

Related on the maternal side of the family.

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

Related meanings

Synonyms maternal related

Opposites unrelated

Use ENATE 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.

How ENATE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ENATE 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 125 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,309 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 ENATE 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.

5.07 Entropy (bits)
125 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ENATE 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#7,309 Rank among openers
Opening with ENATE left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,309 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
823
4 guesses
1,220
5 guesses
219
6 guesses
23

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AENT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
85%
Green tile
36%
All gray
15%

Feedback distribution

ENATE can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

357 answers
190 answers
172 answers
139 answers
129 answers
116 answers
100 answers
81 answers
69 answers
67 answers
64 answers
56 answers
52 answers
51 answers
46 answers
42 answers
37 answers
36 answers
36 answers
34 answers
32 answers
29 answers
26 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1N1A1T1E1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing ENATE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ENATE:

15% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
8% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
7% chance
Suggested:
SOLER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

15.0% →
SOILY 5.60 bits
8.0% →
CAROL 5.20 bits
7.2% →
SOLER 4.93 bits
5.8% →
HOIST 5.34 bits
5.4% →
IRONY 4.94 bits
4.9% →
GORSE 4.57 bits
4.2% →
CRASH 4.54 bits
3.4% →
PALER 4.22 bits
2.9% →
TAROT 4.26 bits
2.8% →
CANON 4.21 bits

Research on ENATE

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

Optimal play

Opening with ENATE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,269 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 ENATE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0).