NINJA
Yes, NINJA was the Wordle answer on November 8, 2023 (Wordle #872).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈnɪnd͡ʒə/
- Noun
-
One who very skillful, considered similar to the historical ninja, especially in covert or stealthy operation.
- Noun
-
One who is considered to resemble the historical ninja in some way.
- Adjective
-
Fast and sneaky.
- Verb
-
To act or move like a ninja, particularly with regard to a combination of speed, power, and stealth.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
A romanized borrowing of Japanese 忍者 (ninja), popularized within Japanese by manga after World War II and in English by Eric Van Lustbader's 1980 novel The Ninja and the 1981 movie Enter the Ninja, of uncertain derivation but with an underlying sense of secret or hidden person.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it NIHNJUH.
In a sentence
He is like a ninja.
Mark moved around like a ninja.
Use NINJA in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 83.2% of possible answers.
Wordle status
A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.
Playable guess
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: November 8, 2023 (#872).
See the full page for that puzzle: November 8, 2023 (#872).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How NINJA performs as a guess
NINJA is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 70.6% of games, misses completely in 29.4%, and leaves about 400 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,615 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.98 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe NINJA 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How NINJA 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches NINJA in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
NINJA can come back 52 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for NINJA; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing NINJA
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to NINJA.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing NINJA:
Research on NINJA
Game-tree analysis and word research for NINJA, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with NINJA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.97 guesses and ranks #14,535 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 4.11 guesses at best and is rank #7,193 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.98; proven optimal play reaches 3.97. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.
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
- NINJA sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 7 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.2 of 5).
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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).