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

MENDS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /mɛndz/

Noun

Synonym of amends.

Noun

Repair, restoration; also, healing, recovery.

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of mend

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 MENDS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MENDS 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 82.6% of games, misses completely in 17.4%, and leaves about 179 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,226 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 MENDS 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.

4.57 Entropy (bits)
179 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 56% of evaluated openers
1.38 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MENDS 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#5,226 Rank among openers
Opening with MENDS left 1 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 #5,226 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
855
4 guesses
1,260
5 guesses
165
6 guesses
17
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
1 vowels
Common:
ENS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
22%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

MENDS can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

414 answers
326 answers
219 answers
151 answers
150 answers
100 answers
95 answers
81 answers
70 answers
65 answers
61 answers
56 answers
40 answers
39 answers
33 answers
29 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3E1N1D2S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing MENDS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MENDS:

17% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
14% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
9% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.4%
CAROL 6.08 bits
13.7%
ORATE 5.20 bits
9.2%
SLART 5.34 bits
6.4%
SLART 5.03 bits
6.3%
TRAIN 5.36 bits
4.2%
LEARE 4.61 bits
4.0%
LAIRY 5.11 bits
3.4%
ARIEL 4.64 bits
2.9%
PRIMO 4.69 bits
2.7%
RAILE 4.61 bits

Research on MENDS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MENDS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,330 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 MENDS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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 MEHNDZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, MENDS is a kind of sewing or improvement.

Synonyms doctor fix repair PATCH restore heal

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MENDS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.9 of 5).

In a sentence

Kindness is the bridge that connects hearts and mends souls.
© tatoeba.org contributor Conjuice (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 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).