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

MINAE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈmaɪ̯.niː//ˈmʌɪ̯.niː//ˈmaɪ̯.ni/

Noun

plural of mina

Alternative forms: minæ

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 MINAE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MINAE 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 89.1% of games, misses completely in 10.9%, and leaves about 110 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,280 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.64 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 MINAE 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.

5.24 Entropy (bits)
110 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 93% of evaluated openers
0.71 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MINAE 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.

3.64 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#3,280 Rank among openers
Opening with MINAE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.64 average. It ranks #3,280 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
86
3 guesses
910
4 guesses
1,133
5 guesses
207
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

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AEIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
38%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

MINAE can come back 119 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

258 answers
231 answers
221 answers
122 answers
117 answers
110 answers
86 answers
76 answers
73 answers
62 answers
60 answers
54 answers
52 answers
51 answers
48 answers
44 answers
44 answers
41 answers
37 answers
29 answers
27 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3I1N1A1E1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MINAE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MINAE:

11% chance
Suggested:
SURLY
10% chance
Suggested:
SETER
9% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.9%
SURLY 5.62 bits
9.7%
SETER 5.49 bits
9.3%
SLART 5.34 bits
5.1%
SLART 4.68 bits
4.9%
ROUSE 4.68 bits
4.6%
SPILT 4.94 bits
3.6%
SLART 4.64 bits
3.2%
FRONT 4.57 bits
3.1%
SALTY 3.90 bits
2.6%
GRANT 4.32 bits

Research on MINAE

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

Optimal play

Opening with MINAE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,961 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 MINAE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.64, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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 MYNAY. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, MINAE is a kind of starling.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MINAE 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.

In a sentence

The baker has five minae.
© 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), 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).