STING
Yes, STING was the Wordle answer on October 3, 2022 (Wordle #471).
As an opener, it rules out about 91.6% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈstɪŋ//ˈstɪŋɡ/
- Noun
-
A bump left on the skin after having been stung.
“Look at this nasty hornet sting: it's turned blue!”
- Noun
-
A puncture made by an insect or arachnid in an attack, usually including the injection of venom.
“She died from a bee sting.”
- Verb
-
To hurt, usually by introducing poison or a sharp point, or both.
- Verb
-
To puncture with the stinger.
“A mosquito stung me on the arm.”
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Used oncePast Wordle answer: October 3, 2022 (#471).
See the full page for that puzzle: October 3, 2022 (#471).
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How STING performs as a guess
STING is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 76.9% of games, misses completely in 23.1%, and leaves about 199 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,959 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe STING 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How STING 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches STING in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
STING can come back 93 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for STING; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing STING
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to STING.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing STING:
Research on STING
Game-tree analysis and word research for STING, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with STING, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,475 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,471 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, 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.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, STING is a kind of pain or hurting.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- STING sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 6 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 5, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 78 of 100. Raters found it easy to picture.
In a sentence
I got a bee sting.
Did a bee sting you?
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0).