SAINT
Yes, SAINT was the Wordle answer on September 22, 2022 (Wordle #460).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /seɪnt//sən(t)/[sn̩(t)]
- Noun
-
A deceased person whom a church or another religious group has officially recognised as especially holy or godly; one eminent for piety and virtue.
“The Roman Catholic Church proclaimed Kateri Tekakwitha a saint in 2012.”
- Noun
-
One of the blessed in heaven.
- Verb
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Synonym of canonize: to honor, formally name, or revere as a saint.
“Many Catholics wished to see Pope John Paul II sainted immediately after his death.”
Alternative forms: St, St.
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English saint, seint, sainct, seinct, sanct, senct, partly from Old English sanct (“saint”) and confluence with Old French saint, seinte (Modern French saint); both from Latin sānctus (“holy, consecrated”, in Late Latin as a noun, “a saint”), past participle of sancīre (“to render sacred, make holy”), akin to sacer (“holy, sacred”). Doublet of Sanctus. Displaced native Middle English halwe (“saint”) from Old English hālga (“saint, holy one”) (> Modern English hallow (“saint”)).
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it SAYNT.
Rhymes with PAINT FAINT TAINT FEINT
Related meanings
In a sentence
He is a saint of a man.
You're not a saint, either.
Use SAINT in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 95.5% 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
Used oncePast Wordle answer: September 22, 2022 (#460).
See the full page for that puzzle: September 22, 2022 (#460).
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 →SAINT in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #201
Reveal this appearance's category
SAINT appeared in ___ GEORGE (purple group).
How SAINT performs as a guess
SAINT 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 85.2% of games, misses completely in 14.8%, and leaves about 107 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #34 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.54 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 SAINT 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 SAINT 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 SAINT in 4 guesses.
Feedback distribution
SAINT can come back 129 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 SAINT; 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 SAINT
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to SAINT.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing SAINT:
Research on SAINT
Game-tree analysis and word research for SAINT, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with SAINT, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.58 guesses and ranks #52 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with SAINT can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.54, at or below the proven-optimal 3.58, 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
- SAINT sits in the common band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 26 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as an everyday word almost every player will know.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 7, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 65 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.6 of 5).
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).