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

KAONS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of kaon

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 KAONS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KAONS 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 81.6% of games, misses completely in 18.4%, and leaves about 164 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,135 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 KAONS 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.

4.73 Entropy (bits)
164 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 67% of evaluated openers
1.22 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KAONS 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#5,135 Rank among openers
Opening with KAONS left 2 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 3.67 average. It ranks #5,135 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
892
4 guesses
1,219
5 guesses
181
6 guesses
15
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
2 vowels
Common:
ANOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
32%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

KAONS can come back 82 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

437 answers
239 answers
187 answers
166 answers
151 answers
113 answers
111 answers
83 answers
55 answers
53 answers
50 answers
45 answers
44 answers
41 answers
38 answers
35 answers
30 answers
28 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5A1O1N1S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing KAONS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KAONS:

18% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
10% chance
Suggested:
DEALT
8% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.4%
TRIED 6.05 bits
10.1%
DEALT 5.56 bits
7.9%
ROUET 5.14 bits
7.0%
STIRE 5.37 bits
6.4%
TRICE 4.63 bits
4.8%
STALE 4.82 bits
4.7%
DINER 5.06 bits
3.5%
TRIDE 4.36 bits
2.3%
TONER 4.37 bits
2.2%
PORTE 3.99 bits

Research on KAONS

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

Optimal play

Opening with KAONS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #5,213 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 KAONS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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 KAWNZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, KAONS is a kind of particle.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
KAONS 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); 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).