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

PINNA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈpɪnə/

Noun

The visible part of the ear in most therians that resides outside of the head, the auricle; outer ear excluding the ear canal.

Noun

A leaflet or primary segment of a pinnate compound leaf.

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

Etymology

From Latin pinna (“dorsal fin; wing, feather”). Doublet of pen, penna, and panne.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Related meanings

Synonyms ear

Use PINNA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.0% 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 PINNA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PINNA 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 75.5% of games, misses completely in 24.5%, and leaves about 285 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,868 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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 PINNA 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.

4.08 Entropy (bits)
285 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PINNA 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.

3.78 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#10,868 Rank among openers
Opening with PINNA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.78 average. It ranks #10,868 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
772
4 guesses
1,199
5 guesses
310
6 guesses
22

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
27%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

PINNA can come back 78 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

584 answers
495 answers
186 answers
115 answers
89 answers
86 answers
72 answers
62 answers
56 answers
54 answers
46 answers
45 answers
40 answers
39 answers
38 answers
37 answers
32 answers
30 answers
29 answers
27 answers
24 answers
18 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
9 answers
7 answers
7 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3I1N1N1A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing PINNA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PINNA:

24% chance
Suggested:
SOREL
21% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
8% chance
Suggested:
CRISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.5% →
SOREL 6.04 bits
20.8% →
TARSE 5.56 bits
7.8% →
CRISE 5.22 bits
4.8% →
SOLED 4.43 bits
3.7% →
SOREL 4.94 bits
3.6% →
SOREL 5.25 bits
3.0% →
RATEL 4.35 bits
2.6% →
SOREL 4.53 bits
2.3% →
TARSE 4.95 bits
2.3% →
TORSE 4.53 bits

Research on PINNA

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

Optimal play

Opening with PINNA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses and ranks #10,952 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,116 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, 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
PINNA sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).