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

SONDE

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /sɒnd//sɑnd/

Noun

Probe; sound.

Noun

Any of various devices for testing physical conditions, often for remote or underwater locations.

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

Use SONDE in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.2% 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 SONDE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SONDE 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 87.0% of games, misses completely in 13.0%, and leaves about 114 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,712 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 SONDE 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.

5.24 Entropy (bits)
114 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SONDE 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#2,712 Rank among openers
Opening with SONDE solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,712 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
74
3 guesses
927
4 guesses
1,162
5 guesses
173
6 guesses
18

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
87%
Green tile
45%
All gray
13%

Feedback distribution

SONDE can come back 115 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

309 answers
251 answers
153 answers
122 answers
113 answers
97 answers
94 answers
92 answers
72 answers
66 answers
65 answers
47 answers
46 answers
44 answers
43 answers
41 answers
39 answers
36 answers
35 answers
33 answers
27 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1O1N1D2E1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing SONDE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SONDE:

13% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
11% chance
Suggested:
LATER
6% chance
Suggested:
LAIRY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.0% →
TRAIL 5.82 bits
10.5% →
LATER 5.41 bits
6.4% →
LAIRY 4.47 bits
5.1% →
ACTOR 5.07 bits
4.7% →
SLART 4.58 bits
4.1% →
GIANT 5.17 bits
3.9% →
CLARY 4.57 bits
3.9% →
TRASH 4.75 bits
3.0% →
ARIEL 4.65 bits
2.8% →
LATER 4.57 bits

Research on SONDE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SONDE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #561 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 SONDE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63; proven optimal play reaches 3.62. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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
SONDE 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).