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

MANTA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈmæn.tə/

Noun

A kind of fabric or blanket used in Latin America and southwestern United States.

Noun

A manta ray (Mobula spp.).

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

How it sounds

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

In a sentence

Manta rays are not very common in these waters.
© tatoeba.org contributor abburns (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Tom swam with the manta rays.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use MANTA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 89.4% 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 MANTA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MANTA 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 73.8% of games, misses completely in 26.2%, and leaves about 253 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,289 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 MANTA 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.

4.25 Entropy (bits)
253 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MANTA 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#8,289 Rank among openers
Opening with MANTA left 3 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 3.73 average. It ranks #8,289 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
800
4 guesses
1,242
5 guesses
230
6 guesses
21

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ANT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
74%
Green tile
27%
All gray
26%

Feedback distribution

MANTA can come back 87 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

625 answers
245 answers
236 answers
190 answers
120 answers
107 answers
83 answers
77 answers
71 answers
68 answers
59 answers
41 answers
39 answers
37 answers
25 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3A1N1T1A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MANTA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MANTA:

26% chance
Suggested:
SOLER
10% chance
Suggested:
SCARE
10% chance
Suggested:
SHIER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

26.2% →
SOLER 5.98 bits
10.3% →
SCARE 5.36 bits
9.9% →
SHIER 5.60 bits
8.0% →
GOIER 5.25 bits
5.0% →
SLYER 4.90 bits
4.5% →
SERAL 5.07 bits
3.5% →
ROULE 4.92 bits
3.2% →
GRISE 4.60 bits
3.0% →
GRICE 4.32 bits
2.9% →
SHORE 4.74 bits

Research on MANTA

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

Optimal play

Opening with MANTA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,115 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,536 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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
MANTA 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.

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).