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

TANSY

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈtanzi//ˈtæn.zi/

Noun

A herbaceous plant with yellow flowers, of the genus Tanacetum, especially Tanacetum vulgare.

Noun

A dish common in the seventeenth century, made of eggs, sugar, rose water, cream, and the juice of herbs (including tansy), baked with butter in a shallow dish. "Originally flavoured with tansy, but by Pepys's time generally having spinach as its predominant flavouring."

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 TANSY performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TANSY 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 83.7% of games, misses completely in 16.3%, and leaves about 131 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #720 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.59 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 TANSY 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.

5.11 Entropy (bits)
131 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 88% of evaluated openers
0.84 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TANSY 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.

3.59 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#720 Rank among openers
Opening with TANSY left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.59 average. It ranks #720 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
1,010
4 guesses
1,123
5 guesses
140
6 guesses
17
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

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ANST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
39%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

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

387 answers
217 answers
136 answers
128 answers
126 answers
118 answers
88 answers
70 answers
68 answers
67 answers
62 answers
55 answers
55 answers
50 answers
42 answers
37 answers
34 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
27 answers
26 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1A1N1S1Y4
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing TANSY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TANSY:

16% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
9% chance
Suggested:
DROLE
6% chance
Suggested:
ROUET

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.3%
DROLE 5.99 bits
9.1%
DROLE 5.46 bits
5.7%
ROUET 5.50 bits
5.4%
GOIER 5.32 bits
5.3%
DROLE 4.90 bits
5.0%
PLIER 5.32 bits
3.7%
PLIER 4.47 bits
2.9%
BLARE 4.79 bits
2.9%
ROULE 4.35 bits
2.8%
GRICE 4.66 bits

Research on TANSY

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

Optimal play

Opening with TANSY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.65 guesses and ranks #1,600 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 TANSY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.59, at or below the proven-optimal 3.65, 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.

How it sounds

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

Rhymes with PANSY

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, TANSY is a kind of composite.

Familiarity and learning

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