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

LOANS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /loʊnz/

Noun

plural of loan

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of loan

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 LOANS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LOANS 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 87.1% of games, misses completely in 12.9%, and leaves about 105 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #333 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.58 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 LOANS 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.

5.26 Entropy (bits)
105 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 94% of evaluated openers
0.69 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LOANS 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.

3.58 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#333 Rank among openers
Opening with LOANS 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 3.58 average. It ranks #333 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
69
3 guesses
1,026
4 guesses
1,103
5 guesses
142
6 guesses
12
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:
ALNOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
34%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

LOANS can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

307 answers
179 answers
145 answers
139 answers
106 answers
104 answers
103 answers
95 answers
91 answers
67 answers
64 answers
52 answers
48 answers
47 answers
46 answers
43 answers
38 answers
37 answers
33 answers
30 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1O1A1N1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing LOANS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LOANS:

13% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
8% chance
Suggested:
CARET
6% chance
Suggested:
STIRE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.9%
TRIED 6.05 bits
7.5%
CARET 5.32 bits
6.1%
STIRE 5.46 bits
5.9%
DRICE 5.07 bits
4.5%
TRIDE 5.13 bits
4.4%
RUOTE 4.52 bits
4.3%
DINER 5.01 bits
4.0%
PARTE 4.49 bits
3.8%
TRUCE 5.13 bits
2.8%
PATER 4.80 bits

Research on LOANS

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

Optimal play

Opening with LOANS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #1,017 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.75 guesses at best and is rank #310 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.58, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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 LOHNZ.

Rhymes with JONES BONES ZONES TONES CONES

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, LOANS is a kind of debt or word.

Synonyms lend

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
LOANS sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 32 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.6 of 5).

In a sentence

He always loans me money.
© tatoeba.org contributor sharris123 (CC BY 2.0 FR)
I'm trying to pay off my loans.
© tatoeba.org contributor ddnktr (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); 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).