PENCE
PENCE is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /pɛns//pəns/
- Noun
-
plural of penny (the subunit of the pound sterling or Irish pound).
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
Americanized spelling of German Pentz or Benz.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it PEHNS.
Rhymes with SENSE HENCE FENCE DENSE TENSE
Related meanings
Synonyms cent
In a sentence
It's only six pence per second.
One pound is a hundred pence.
Use PENCE in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 90.6% 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
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How PENCE performs as a guess
PENCE 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 74.7% of games, misses completely in 25.3%, and leaves about 224 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,827 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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 PENCE 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 PENCE 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 PENCE in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
PENCE can come back 94 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 PENCE; 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 PENCE
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PENCE.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PENCE:
Research on PENCE
Game-tree analysis and word research for PENCE, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PENCE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,773 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.85 guesses at best and is rank #2,840 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, 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
- PENCE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 5 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Learner level
- Appears in beginner learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level A2); among the first words English learners study.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 5, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 85 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).