5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer F tier for first-turn info

NAANS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.9% of possible answers.

Open Solver with NAANS Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of naan

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 NAANS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NAANS 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 68.2% of games, misses completely in 31.8%, and leaves about 334 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,699 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.88 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

N___S N in the 1st position and S in the 5th position N__N_ N in the 1st position and N in the 4th position _A__S A in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in NAANS.

First-turn measures

All four describe NAANS 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.

3.77 Entropy (bits)
334 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 14% of evaluated openers
2.18 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NAANS 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.

3.88 Avg guesses
99.70% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#13,699 Rank among openers
Opening with NAANS left 7 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 3.88 average. It ranks #13,699 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
631
4 guesses
1,288
5 guesses
361
6 guesses
30
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

3/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ANS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
68%
Green tile
35%
All gray
32%

Feedback distribution

NAANS can come back 60 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

756 answers
296 answers
182 answers
167 answers
164 answers
132 answers
92 answers
85 answers
44 answers
43 answers
41 answers
41 answers
40 answers
31 answers
26 answers
25 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
7 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1A1A1N1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Try next

TOILE ROUET ALERT TRICE SHITE GOIER

Strategy after playing NAANS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NAANS:

32% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
12% chance
Suggested:
ROUET
8% chance
Suggested:
ALERT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

31.8% →
TOILE 6.01 bits
12.5% →
ROUET 5.46 bits
7.7% →
ALERT 5.35 bits
7.0% →
TRICE 4.71 bits
6.9% →
TOILE 5.06 bits
5.6% →
TRICE 5.13 bits
3.9% →
SHITE 4.15 bits
3.6% →
GOIER 4.73 bits
1.9% →
STILE 4.03 bits
1.8% →
STURE 4.34 bits

Research on NAANS

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

Optimal play

Opening with NAANS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.89 guesses and ranks #13,574 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 NAANS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.88, at or below the proven-optimal 3.89, 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 NAHNZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, NAANS is a kind of bread.

Synonyms nan

Familiarity and learning

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