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

RONIN

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A masterless samurai (who often becomes a mercenary to make ends meet).

Noun

A student who has failed the entrance examination for the high school or university of their choice: if the student does not wish to take the exam the following year or is unable to, the student becomes a ronin, assuming full responsibility for their own training and survival.

Alternative forms: rōnin

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 RONIN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts RONIN 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 78.1% of games, misses completely in 21.9%, and leaves about 210 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,037 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 RONIN 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.

4.45 Entropy (bits)
210 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 48% of evaluated openers
1.50 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RONIN 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#8,037 Rank among openers
Opening with RONIN 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 3.72 average. It ranks #8,037 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
859
4 guesses
1,199
5 guesses
239
6 guesses
19
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
INOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
30%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

RONIN can come back 82 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

520 answers
318 answers
196 answers
133 answers
126 answers
111 answers
105 answers
95 answers
65 answers
62 answers
61 answers
44 answers
43 answers
31 answers
28 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

R1O1N1I1N1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing RONIN

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RONIN:

22% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
13% chance
Suggested:
TEASE
8% chance
Suggested:
STILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.9%
SLATE 6.47 bits
13.4%
TEASE 5.48 bits
8.3%
STILE 5.47 bits
5.6%
SLATE 5.24 bits
5.3%
THALE 4.48 bits
4.7%
TRACE 4.48 bits
4.4%
PRATE 4.54 bits
4.0%
SALET 5.20 bits
2.7%
CADET 4.88 bits
2.6%
STAGE 4.25 bits

Research on RONIN

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

Optimal play

Opening with RONIN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,800 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.93 guesses at best and is rank #4,954 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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 ROHNIHN.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
RONIN 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).