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

SONNE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Obsolete spelling of son.

Noun

Obsolete spelling of sun.

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 SONNE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SONNE 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 161 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,128 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 SONNE 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.

4.76 Entropy (bits)
161 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 69% of evaluated openers
1.19 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SONNE 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
99.92% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#10,128 Rank among openers
Opening with SONNE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #10,128 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
774
4 guesses
1,214
5 guesses
276
6 guesses
30
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
49%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

SONNE can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

384 answers
328 answers
186 answers
150 answers
122 answers
120 answers
94 answers
69 answers
68 answers
52 answers
47 answers
43 answers
43 answers
42 answers
39 answers
38 answers
36 answers
33 answers
31 answers
28 answers
27 answers
22 answers
17 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1O1N1N1E1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 7 points

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

Strategy after playing SONNE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SONNE:

16% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
14% chance
Suggested:
ALTER
8% chance
Suggested:
LAIRY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.2%
TRAIL 5.92 bits
13.8%
ALTER 5.35 bits
7.8%
LAIRY 4.46 bits
6.3%
ACTOR 5.00 bits
5.1%
CLARY 4.73 bits
5.1%
CLARY 4.63 bits
4.0%
TRASH 4.73 bits
2.9%
GRANT 4.37 bits
2.9%
ARIEL 4.51 bits
2.2%
PLIER 4.22 bits

Research on SONNE

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

Optimal play

Opening with SONNE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #7,800 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.93 guesses at best and is rank #4,843 of the 7,453 openers that can still 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 SAHN.

Rhymes with SALON BATON SPAWN KORAN PECAN

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
SONNE 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).