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

MINOS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of mino

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 MINOS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts MINOS 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 79.2% of games, misses completely in 20.8%, and leaves about 188 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,485 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 MINOS 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.

4.65 Entropy (bits)
188 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 62% of evaluated openers
1.30 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How MINOS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#2,485 Rank among openers
Opening with MINOS left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,485 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
59
3 guesses
961
4 guesses
1,144
5 guesses
169
6 guesses
18
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
2 vowels
Common:
INOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
23%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

MINOS can come back 99 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

493 answers
241 answers
234 answers
169 answers
108 answers
99 answers
80 answers
79 answers
66 answers
64 answers
63 answers
51 answers
50 answers
45 answers
33 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

M3I1N1O1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing MINOS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing MINOS:

21% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
10% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
10% chance
Suggested:
CRATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.8%
CARLE 6.20 bits
10.2%
SLATE 5.72 bits
9.9%
CRATE 5.24 bits
7.1%
TRACE 5.53 bits
4.5%
TARGE 5.19 bits
4.2%
LATER 4.71 bits
3.4%
TARGE 4.76 bits
3.3%
STORE 4.64 bits
2.8%
PARLE 5.00 bits
2.7%
STILE 4.40 bits

Research on MINOS

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

Optimal play

Opening with MINOS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,123 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,196 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it MYNOHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
MINOS 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.

In a sentence

Minos put down piracy, that his revenues might come to him better.
© tatoeba.org contributor mhenderson5 (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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).