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

PINCE

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

No dictionary definition for PINCE is recorded in our sourced data.

As an opener, it rules out about 93.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

We do not have a sourced definition for this word yet.

Check PINCE on Wiktionary or report a missing entry.

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 PINCE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PINCE 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 83.1% of games, misses completely in 16.9%, and leaves about 149 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #515 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.58 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 PINCE 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.

5.02 Entropy (bits)
149 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 84% of evaluated openers
0.92 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PINCE 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.

3.58 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#515 Rank among openers
Opening with PINCE left 1 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 3.58 average. It ranks #515 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
73
3 guesses
1,039
4 guesses
1,051
5 guesses
173
6 guesses
17
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
2 vowels
Common:
EIN

Feedback chances

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

Feedback distribution

PINCE can come back 116 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

402 answers
281 answers
188 answers
123 answers
113 answers
87 answers
81 answers
75 answers
72 answers
61 answers
50 answers
48 answers
45 answers
41 answers
36 answers
36 answers
34 answers
29 answers
28 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3I1N1C3E1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing PINCE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PINCE:

17% chance
Suggested:
SORAL
12% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR
8% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.9%
SORAL 6.01 bits
11.8%
SOLAR 5.25 bits
7.9%
SLART 5.30 bits
5.2%
SLART 5.49 bits
4.8%
ROAST 5.27 bits
3.7%
SORAL 5.44 bits
3.4%
EATEN 4.38 bits
3.2%
SALTY 4.36 bits
3.0%
ROAST 4.44 bits
2.6%
SLART 5.00 bits

Research on PINCE

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

Optimal play

Opening with PINCE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.63 guesses and ranks #741 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.77 guesses at best and is rank #613 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.58, at or below the proven-optimal 3.63, 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 PIHNS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PINCE 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.

In a sentence

He wore gold rimmed pince-nez.
© tatoeba.org contributor Hybrid (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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