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

KANJI

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkænd͡ʒi//ˈkaːnd͡ʒi//ˈkɑnd͡ʒi/

Noun

The system of writing Japanese using Chinese characters.

“Japanese is written in a mixture of kanji and kana.”

Noun

Any individual Chinese character as used in the Japanese language.

“I know about a thousand kanji.”

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Japanese 漢字(かんじ) (kanji, “Chinese characters”), from Middle Chinese 漢 (MC xanH, “Han dynasty, China”) + Middle Chinese 字 (MC dziH, “[written] character”) (Compare Korean 한자 (hanja), Mandarin 漢字 /汉字 (hànzì), Vietnamese Hán tự, Hokkien 漢字 /汉字 (hàn-jī / hàn-lī), Cantonese 漢字 /汉字 (hon³ zi⁶)). Doublet of hanja and Hanzi.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KANJEE.

In a sentence

How many kanji are there?
© tatoeba.org contributor DJ_Saidez (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Can you read this kanji?
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use KANJI in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 86.6% 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 KANJI performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KANJI 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 72.8% of games, misses completely in 27.2%, and leaves about 318 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,373 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.86 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 KANJI 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.

3.67 Entropy (bits)
318 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
86.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KANJI 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.

3.86 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#13,373 Rank among openers
Opening with KANJI 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 3.86 average. It ranks #13,373 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
34
3 guesses
617
4 guesses
1,365
5 guesses
312
6 guesses
24

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
73%
Green tile
19%
All gray
27%

Feedback distribution

KANJI can come back 54 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

649 answers
375 answers
331 answers
190 answers
139 answers
99 answers
67 answers
64 answers
53 answers
45 answers
44 answers
41 answers
30 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
26 answers
17 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers
8 answers
7 answers
4 answers
4 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5A1N1J8I1
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 19 points

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

Strategy after playing KANJI

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KANJI:

27% chance
Suggested:
SOREL
16% chance
Suggested:
REAST
14% chance
Suggested:
TILDE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.2% →
SOREL 6.08 bits
15.7% →
REAST 5.60 bits
13.9% →
TILDE 5.29 bits
8.0% →
SLYER 4.85 bits
5.8% →
SORED 5.30 bits
4.2% →
SOGER 4.61 bits
2.8% →
SLART 4.60 bits
2.7% →
GRADE 4.76 bits
2.2% →
CRUSE 4.86 bits
1.9% →
CLOSE 4.34 bits

Research on KANJI

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

Optimal play

Opening with KANJI, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.88 guesses and ranks #13,396 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.02 guesses at best and is rank #6,443 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.86, at or below the proven-optimal 3.88, 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
KANJI sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).