Possible answer Not used yet B tier for first-turn info

SINEW

SINEW is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈsɪnjuː//ˈsɪny//ˈsɪnju/

Noun

A cord or tendon of the body.

Noun

A cord or string, particularly (music) as of a musical instrument.

Verb

To knit together or make strong with, or as if with, sinews.

Alternative forms: sinnew

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

Etymology

From Middle English synwe, synewe (“tendon; ligament or other connective tissue; muscle; nerve; leaf vein”), from Old English sinu (“tendon, sinew; nerve”), from Proto-West Germanic *sinu, from Proto-Germanic *sinwō, *senawō (“sinew”), from Proto-Indo-European *snéh₁wr̥ (“sinew, tendon”), from *(s)neh₁- (“to twist (threads), spin, weave”).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Related meanings

Synonyms muscle tendon

Use SINEW in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.6% 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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 SINEW performs as a guess

SINEW 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 83.4% of games, misses completely in 16.6%, and leaves about 153 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,573 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 SINEW 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.

4.91 Entropy (bits)
153 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
93.6% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SINEW 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#5,573 Rank among openers
Opening with SINEW solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,573 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
73
3 guesses
855
4 guesses
1,192
5 guesses
218
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EINS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
39%
All gray
17%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S I L E N
S I N E W

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches SINEW in 3 guesses.

Feedback distribution

SINEW can come back 107 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

395 answers
314 answers
143 answers
133 answers
116 answers
92 answers
91 answers
74 answers
73 answers
69 answers
67 answers
65 answers
59 answers
50 answers
35 answers
32 answers
31 answers
29 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1I1N1E1W4
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SINEW

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SINEW:

17% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
13% chance
Suggested:
REATE
6% chance
Suggested:
OATER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.6% →
CAROL 5.89 bits
13.2% →
REATE 5.53 bits
6.0% →
OATER 4.21 bits
5.6% →
TRAIL 5.22 bits
4.9% →
CLARY 4.79 bits
3.9% →
GRANT 4.80 bits
3.8% →
TRASH 4.92 bits
3.1% →
SALTY 3.80 bits
3.1% →
URATE 4.44 bits
2.9% →
LAIRY 4.14 bits

Research on SINEW

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

Optimal play

Opening with SINEW, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,675 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 SINEW can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.68, 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
SINEW 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).