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

SONES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of sone

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 SONES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SONES 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 83.8% of games, misses completely in 16.2%, and leaves about 168 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,134 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 SONES 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.

4.66 Entropy (bits)
168 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 62% of evaluated openers
1.29 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SONES 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#10,134 Rank among openers
Opening with SONES left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #10,134 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
763
4 guesses
1,244
5 guesses
267
6 guesses
25
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
2 vowels
Common:
ENOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
43%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

SONES can come back 82 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

384 answers
360 answers
154 answers
150 answers
120 answers
112 answers
110 answers
72 answers
72 answers
64 answers
54 answers
53 answers
52 answers
48 answers
40 answers
40 answers
38 answers
38 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
22 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1O1N1E1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing SONES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SONES:

16% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
15% chance
Suggested:
REATE
6% chance
Suggested:
ALTER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.2%
TRAIL 5.92 bits
15.2%
REATE 5.56 bits
6.5%
ALTER 4.31 bits
6.3%
ACTOR 5.00 bits
5.1%
CLARY 4.63 bits
4.7%
GRANT 5.07 bits
4.6%
CLARY 4.75 bits
3.0%
TRASH 4.81 bits
3.0%
PLATE 4.61 bits
2.7%
INANE 4.40 bits

Research on SONES

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

Optimal play

Opening with SONES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,069 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 SONES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76; proven optimal play reaches 3.75. 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.

How it sounds

One syllable Say it SOHNZ.

Rhymes with JONES LOANS BONES ZONES TONES

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, SONES is a kind of unit.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SONES 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); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).