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

NANOS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of nano

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Etymology

Borrowed from Greek Νάνος (Nános).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it NAHNOHZ.

Use NANOS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.6% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How NANOS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NANOS 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 80.2% of games, misses completely in 19.8%, and leaves about 201 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,534 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 NANOS 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.

4.33 Entropy (bits)
201 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NANOS 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,534 Rank among openers
Opening with NANOS left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,534 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
50
3 guesses
772
4 guesses
1,254
5 guesses
259
6 guesses
15

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ANOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
25%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

NANOS can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

473 answers
266 answers
240 answers
198 answers
163 answers
129 answers
102 answers
89 answers
69 answers
65 answers
64 answers
47 answers
47 answers
45 answers
43 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1A1N1O1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing NANOS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NANOS:

20% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
11% chance
Suggested:
TRACE
10% chance
Suggested:
TRODE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.8% →
TRIED 5.99 bits
11.2% →
TRACE 5.54 bits
10.1% →
TRODE 5.08 bits
8.3% →
STIRE 5.40 bits
6.8% →
RATEL 4.47 bits
5.4% →
THALE 4.71 bits
4.3% →
TRIDE 5.13 bits
3.7% →
PORTE 4.66 bits
2.9% →
GRICE 4.58 bits
2.7% →
FLORA 4.32 bits

Research on NANOS

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

Optimal play

Opening with NANOS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,759 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.95 guesses at best and is rank #5,212 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.80, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
NANOS 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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).