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

SANTS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 91.8% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Proper noun

plural of Sant

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 SANTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SANTS 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 77.7% of games, misses completely in 22.3%, and leaves about 196 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,600 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 SANTS 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.

4.55 Entropy (bits)
196 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 55% of evaluated openers
1.39 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SANTS 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#7,600 Rank among openers
Opening with SANTS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,600 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
38
3 guesses
860
4 guesses
1,216
5 guesses
214
6 guesses
24
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
1 vowels
Common:
ANST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
38%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

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

529 answers
248 answers
171 answers
154 answers
127 answers
111 answers
79 answers
72 answers
69 answers
64 answers
56 answers
52 answers
51 answers
44 answers
43 answers
40 answers
37 answers
30 answers
28 answers
28 answers
22 answers
19 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1A1N1T1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing SANTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SANTS:

22% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
10% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
7% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.3%
DROLE 6.08 bits
10.4%
DROLE 5.46 bits
7.2%
ROUET 5.49 bits
6.5%
GOIER 5.26 bits
5.3%
COREY 4.55 bits
4.7%
PLIER 5.19 bits
3.3%
ALERT 4.84 bits
3.0%
GRICE 4.70 bits
2.9%
COURE 4.37 bits
2.7%
COURE 4.82 bits

Research on SANTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with SANTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,738 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,820 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 SANTS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SANTS 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.

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).