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

TARNS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /tɑː(ɹ)nz/

Noun

plural of tarn

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

Use TARNS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 95.9% 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 TARNS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TARNS 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 88.0% of games, misses completely in 12.0%, and leaves about 97 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #38 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.54 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 TARNS 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.

5.43 Entropy (bits)
97 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TARNS 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.

3.54 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.66 Spread of game lengths
#38 Rank among openers
Opening with TARNS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.66 means those games clustered within about 0.66 of a guess of the 3.54 average. It ranks #38 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
66
3 guesses
1,092
4 guesses
1,062
5 guesses
120
6 guesses
13

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ANRST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
88%
Green tile
32%
All gray
12%

Feedback distribution

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

286 answers
198 answers
132 answers
127 answers
115 answers
104 answers
103 answers
75 answers
69 answers
63 answers
49 answers
48 answers
46 answers
45 answers
40 answers
38 answers
38 answers
35 answers
35 answers
33 answers
32 answers
31 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1A1R1N1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing TARNS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TARNS:

12% chance
Suggested:
MOILE
8% chance
Suggested:
DECOR
6% chance
Suggested:
CLAME

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

12.0% →
MOILE 5.87 bits
8.3% →
DECOR 4.88 bits
5.5% →
CLAME 5.32 bits
5.3% →
SPILE 5.39 bits
4.8% →
MOILE 5.04 bits
4.4% →
LITHE 5.16 bits
4.3% →
BRACE 4.72 bits
3.1% →
STIPE 4.43 bits
2.9% →
COLEY 4.24 bits
2.6% →
SHULE 4.82 bits

Research on TARNS

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

Optimal play

Opening with TARNS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.59 guesses and ranks #93 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.69 guesses at best and is rank #7 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.54, at or below the proven-optimal 3.59, 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
TARNS 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).