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

FLANS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of flan

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of flan

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 FLANS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts FLANS 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 80.9% of games, misses completely in 19.1%, and leaves about 169 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,260 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 FLANS 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.

4.74 Entropy (bits)
169 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 68% of evaluated openers
1.21 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How FLANS 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
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#2,260 Rank among openers
Opening with FLANS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.62 average. It ranks #2,260 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
61
3 guesses
945
4 guesses
1,173
5 guesses
165
6 guesses
9
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:
ALNS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
30%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

FLANS can come back 95 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

454 answers
219 answers
215 answers
162 answers
145 answers
100 answers
90 answers
72 answers
70 answers
69 answers
65 answers
45 answers
43 answers
43 answers
38 answers
28 answers
28 answers
28 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

F4L1A1N1S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing FLANS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing FLANS:

19% chance
Suggested:
TRODE
9% chance
Suggested:
CARTE
9% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.1%
TRODE 6.14 bits
9.2%
CARTE 5.39 bits
9.1%
ROUET 5.65 bits
6.8%
LIBEL 4.97 bits
6.1%
DINER 5.20 bits
4.2%
TALER 4.57 bits
3.8%
TRUCE 5.09 bits
3.0%
CANOE 4.55 bits
2.9%
PARTE 4.81 bits
2.9%
TRIDE 4.75 bits

Research on FLANS

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

Optimal play

Opening with FLANS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,740 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 FLANS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, 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

One syllable Say it FLANZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, FLANS is a kind of sweet.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
FLANS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with taste (4.1 of 5).

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 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).