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

SPINA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈspaɪ.nə/

Noun

A spine; the backbone.

Noun

One of the quills of a spinet.

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

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from Latin spīna (“a thorn; a prickle, spine”). Doublet of spine.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it SPEENUH.

Rhymes with ARENA HYENA QUINA

Use SPINA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.2% 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 SPINA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts SPINA 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 82.9% of games, misses completely in 17.1%, and leaves about 162 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,705 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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 SPINA 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.

4.88 Entropy (bits)
162 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.2% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How SPINA 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#1,705 Rank among openers
Opening with SPINA left 1 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 3.61 average. It ranks #1,705 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
68
3 guesses
976
4 guesses
1,122
5 guesses
171
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AINS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
32%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

SPINA can come back 106 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

407 answers
353 answers
140 answers
104 answers
90 answers
87 answers
86 answers
79 answers
77 answers
77 answers
67 answers
63 answers
51 answers
45 answers
42 answers
36 answers
34 answers
34 answers
29 answers
28 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

S1P3I1N1A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing SPINA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing SPINA:

17% chance
Suggested:
ROUET
15% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
6% chance
Suggested:
TILDE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.1% →
ROUET 5.91 bits
14.8% →
CARLE 5.53 bits
5.9% →
TILDE 5.16 bits
4.4% →
COREY 4.82 bits
3.8% →
ROUTE 5.21 bits
3.6% →
ROUET 4.82 bits
3.6% →
CRUET 4.97 bits
3.3% →
THALE 4.69 bits
3.2% →
CARLE 4.55 bits
3.2% →
POREY 5.01 bits

Research on SPINA

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

Optimal play

Opening with SPINA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,466 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #794 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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
SPINA 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).