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

KENDO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A Japanese martial art using "swords" of split bamboo.

Alternative forms: kendō

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 KENDO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KENDO 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 204 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,493 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 KENDO 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.

4.41 Entropy (bits)
204 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 46% of evaluated openers
1.54 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KENDO 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#6,493 Rank among openers
Opening with KENDO 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,493 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
41
3 guesses
859
4 guesses
1,244
5 guesses
195
6 guesses
13
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:
ENO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
20%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

KENDO can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

436 answers
391 answers
246 answers
135 answers
116 answers
111 answers
75 answers
75 answers
72 answers
68 answers
63 answers
44 answers
43 answers
33 answers
32 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5E1N1D2O1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing KENDO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KENDO:

18% chance
Suggested:
SLART
16% chance
Suggested:
SLART
10% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.4%
SLART 6.08 bits
16.5%
SLART 5.83 bits
10.4%
SLART 5.34 bits
5.7%
SLART 5.05 bits
4.9%
TORSE 4.68 bits
4.7%
SAINT 5.38 bits
3.2%
LAIRY 4.92 bits
3.2%
SAREE 4.73 bits
3.0%
GROIN 4.34 bits
2.9%
SLART 4.75 bits

Research on KENDO

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

Optimal play

Opening with KENDO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #7,169 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 KENDO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KEHNDOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
KENDO sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

Kendo is a martial art.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Kendo is a Japanese martial art.
© tatoeba.org contributor CM (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).