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

KEENO

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈkiːnəʊ/

Noun

A pupil who works hard; a swot.

Noun

Alternative form of keno (“gambling game”).

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

Use KEENO in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.1% 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 KEENO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KEENO 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 77.8% of games, misses completely in 22.2%, and leaves about 236 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,347 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 KEENO 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.

4.19 Entropy (bits)
236 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KEENO 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#11,347 Rank among openers
Opening with KEENO 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 3.79 average. It ranks #11,347 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
752
4 guesses
1,244
5 guesses
289
6 guesses
26

Composition

4/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
ENO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
27%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

KEENO can come back 66 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

529 answers
338 answers
299 answers
127 answers
116 answers
101 answers
76 answers
75 answers
75 answers
69 answers
67 answers
51 answers
45 answers
34 answers
32 answers
29 answers
28 answers
25 answers
23 answers
20 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5E1E1N1O1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing KEENO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KEENO:

22% chance
Suggested:
SLART
14% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
13% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.2% →
SLART 5.97 bits
14.2% →
RAILE 5.32 bits
12.5% →
SLART 5.28 bits
5.3% →
TORSE 4.57 bits
4.9% →
SLART 5.01 bits
4.2% →
PANIC 4.75 bits
3.2% →
SAULT 4.83 bits
3.1% →
ARSON 4.54 bits
3.1% →
LINER 4.64 bits
2.9% →
SLART 4.74 bits

Research on KEENO

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

Optimal play

Opening with KEENO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,329 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.97 guesses at best and is rank #5,659 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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
KEENO 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).