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

MENES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of mene

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 MENES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MENES 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 77.7% of games, misses completely in 22.3%, and leaves about 206 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,203 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 MENES 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.

4.47 Entropy (bits)
206 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 50% of evaluated openers
1.48 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MENES 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#8,203 Rank among openers
Opening with MENES left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #8,203 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
48
3 guesses
804
4 guesses
1,264
5 guesses
220
6 guesses
16
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
32%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

MENES can come back 81 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

529 answers
236 answers
231 answers
177 answers
131 answers
116 answers
97 answers
80 answers
67 answers
63 answers
56 answers
45 answers
34 answers
29 answers
28 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3E1N1E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MENES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MENES:

22% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
10% chance
Suggested:
SAULT
10% chance
Suggested:
GRATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.3%
CAROL 5.96 bits
9.9%
SAULT 5.29 bits
9.7%
GRATE 5.22 bits
7.5%
TRAIN 5.26 bits
5.5%
LAIRY 4.20 bits
4.9%
SLART 4.85 bits
4.1%
CLARY 5.01 bits
3.4%
PRIMO 4.66 bits
2.8%
SAUCY 4.05 bits
2.7%
SAUNT 4.32 bits

Research on MENES

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

Optimal play

Opening with MENES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #7,126 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 MENES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, 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 MEHNUHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MENES 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).