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

SANTO

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A wooden or ivory statue of a saint, angel or other religious figure, found in Spain and former Spanish colonies.

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

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it SANTOH.

Rhymes with CANTO

In a sentence

Santo Domingo is the capital of the Dominican Republic.
© tatoeba.org contributor MarijnKp (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The capital of the Dominican Republic is Santo Domingo.
© tatoeba.org contributor Adelpa (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use SANTO in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.4% 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 SANTO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SANTO 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 86.4% of games, misses completely in 13.6%, and leaves about 109 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #251 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.57 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 SANTO 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.

5.32 Entropy (bits)
109 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SANTO 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.

3.57 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#251 Rank among openers
Opening with SANTO left 3 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.57 average. It ranks #251 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
76
3 guesses
1,024
4 guesses
1,101
5 guesses
133
6 guesses
17

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ANOST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
37%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

SANTO can come back 117 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

325 answers
189 answers
189 answers
113 answers
109 answers
83 answers
83 answers
70 answers
62 answers
59 answers
57 answers
57 answers
53 answers
53 answers
51 answers
39 answers
39 answers
35 answers
35 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1A1N1T1O1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing SANTO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SANTO:

14% chance
Suggested:
PLIER
8% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
8% chance
Suggested:
BLARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.6% →
PLIER 5.91 bits
7.9% →
DROLE 5.29 bits
7.9% →
BLARE 5.40 bits
4.7% →
TRIED 5.44 bits
4.6% →
PLIER 4.50 bits
3.5% →
DRICE 4.83 bits
3.5% →
PLIER 5.18 bits
2.9% →
DROLE 4.39 bits
2.6% →
ALERT 4.84 bits
2.5% →
PURSE 4.83 bits

Research on SANTO

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

Optimal play

Opening with SANTO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #584 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.74 guesses at best and is rank #220 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.57, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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
SANTO sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

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).