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

TENDU

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A move in which the leg and foot stretch to point in a particular direction, but the foot does not leave the floor.

Noun

Diospyros melanoxylon, a tree in the family Ebenaceae, native to parts of South Asia, whose leaves are used as beedi-wrappers.

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

Etymology

Borrowed from Hindi तेंदू (tendū), from Sanskrit तिन्दुक (tinduka).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use TENDU in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 93.4% 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 TENDU performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TENDU 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 83.6% of games, misses completely in 16.4%, and leaves about 157 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,344 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.66 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 TENDU 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.

4.79 Entropy (bits)
157 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TENDU 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.

3.66 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#4,344 Rank among openers
Opening with TENDU left 3 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 3.66 average. It ranks #4,344 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
53
3 guesses
898
4 guesses
1,215
5 guesses
168
6 guesses
17

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
23%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

TENDU can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

390 answers
315 answers
173 answers
139 answers
118 answers
114 answers
95 answers
84 answers
72 answers
63 answers
62 answers
47 answers
44 answers
42 answers
36 answers
34 answers
34 answers
31 answers
27 answers
25 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1E1N1D2U1
Total: 6 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing TENDU

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TENDU:

16% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
13% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR
7% chance
Suggested:
HOIST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.4% →
CAROL 6.07 bits
13.2% →
SOLAR 5.41 bits
7.3% →
HOIST 5.30 bits
5.8% →
SURLY 4.87 bits
4.9% →
ARSON 5.07 bits
4.8% →
SLART 5.26 bits
4.0% →
LEARE 4.68 bits
3.5% →
RAISE 4.60 bits
3.0% →
LAIRY 5.01 bits
2.6% →
SOLAR 4.40 bits

Research on TENDU

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

Optimal play

Opening with TENDU, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,331 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 TENDU can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TENDU 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).