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

MINGS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of ming

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 MINGS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MINGS 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 72.1% of games, misses completely in 27.9%, and leaves about 271 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,898 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 MINGS 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.

4.24 Entropy (bits)
271 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 35% of evaluated openers
1.70 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MINGS 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,898 Rank among openers
Opening with MINGS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,898 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
872
4 guesses
1,218
5 guesses
196
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:
INS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
20%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

MINGS can come back 85 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

663 answers
318 answers
177 answers
153 answers
88 answers
83 answers
79 answers
70 answers
68 answers
62 answers
60 answers
54 answers
36 answers
32 answers
31 answers
26 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3I1N1G2S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing MINGS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MINGS:

28% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
13% chance
Suggested:
STALE
7% chance
Suggested:
TRACE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.9%
ROATE 6.17 bits
13.4%
STALE 5.74 bits
7.5%
TRACE 5.56 bits
6.4%
ROATE 5.27 bits
3.7%
CADET 4.51 bits
3.5%
BLAER 5.22 bits
3.3%
GLARE 5.24 bits
2.9%
STILE 4.48 bits
2.9%
TALER 4.74 bits
2.6%
HAOLE 4.59 bits

Research on MINGS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MINGS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,380 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.83 guesses at best and is rank #2,095 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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 MIHNGZ.

Rhymes with WINGS KINGS RINGS SINGS PINGS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, MINGS is a kind of dynasty.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MINGS 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).