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

PENSY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Adjective

pensive

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 PENSY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PENSY 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 83.4% of games, misses completely in 16.6%, and leaves about 171 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,455 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 PENSY 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.

4.75 Entropy (bits)
171 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 69% of evaluated openers
1.19 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PENSY 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,455 Rank among openers
Opening with PENSY solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,455 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
70
3 guesses
851
4 guesses
1,224
5 guesses
187
6 guesses
22
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
1 vowels
Common:
ENS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
37%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

PENSY can come back 102 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

393 answers
376 answers
144 answers
144 answers
117 answers
108 answers
98 answers
95 answers
69 answers
49 answers
46 answers
42 answers
41 answers
40 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
30 answers
28 answers
25 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
17 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3E1N1S1Y4
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing PENSY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PENSY:

17% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
16% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
6% chance
Suggested:
DROLE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.6%
TRAIL 6.10 bits
15.8%
ORATE 5.26 bits
6.1%
DROLE 4.35 bits
6.1%
TRAIN 5.29 bits
4.9%
STAIR 5.09 bits
4.5%
LATER 4.58 bits
4.1%
SLART 4.85 bits
4.0%
ARIEL 4.67 bits
2.9%
TRASH 4.34 bits
2.1%
SAUNT 4.33 bits

Research on PENSY

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

Optimal play

Opening with PENSY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,001 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.84 guesses at best and is rank #2,609 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, 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 PEHNSEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.