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

FINOS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈfiːnəʊz/

Noun

plural of fino

Noun

Second-best wool from Merino sheep.

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

Use FINOS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.2% 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 FINOS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FINOS 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 77.6% of games, misses completely in 22.4%, and leaves about 210 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,482 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 FINOS 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.

4.50 Entropy (bits)
210 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FINOS 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#4,482 Rank among openers
Opening with FINOS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.66 average. It ranks #4,482 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
55
3 guesses
912
4 guesses
1,175
5 guesses
195
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
INOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
24%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

FINOS can come back 93 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

534 answers
260 answers
246 answers
166 answers
114 answers
95 answers
86 answers
74 answers
68 answers
65 answers
57 answers
50 answers
44 answers
38 answers
27 answers
23 answers
23 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4I1N1O1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing FINOS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FINOS:

22% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
11% chance
Suggested:
STARE
10% chance
Suggested:
RATEL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.4% →
CARLE 6.21 bits
10.9% →
STARE 5.66 bits
10.3% →
RATEL 5.12 bits
7.0% →
CRATE 5.55 bits
4.8% →
TALER 5.14 bits
4.0% →
CADET 4.66 bits
3.6% →
STORE 4.63 bits
3.1% →
TARGE 4.72 bits
2.9% →
STILE 4.42 bits
2.7% →
DRONE 4.42 bits

Research on FINOS

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

Optimal play

Opening with FINOS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,008 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.84 guesses at best and is rank #2,653 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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
FINOS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).