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

TENES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Proper noun

The eponymous hero of the island of Tenedos.

Alternative forms: Tennes

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 TENES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts TENES 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 81.0% of games, misses completely in 19.0%, and leaves about 155 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,926 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 TENES 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.

4.86 Entropy (bits)
155 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 76% of evaluated openers
1.08 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How TENES 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#5,926 Rank among openers
Opening with TENES left 3 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 3.68 average. It ranks #5,926 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
865
4 guesses
1,203
5 guesses
211
6 guesses
14
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
34%
All gray
19%

Feedback distribution

TENES can come back 94 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

451 answers
186 answers
167 answers
145 answers
134 answers
113 answers
98 answers
90 answers
74 answers
65 answers
58 answers
54 answers
48 answers
45 answers
39 answers
39 answers
36 answers
33 answers
26 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
23 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

T1E1N1E1S1
Total: 5 points

Words With Friends

Total: 6 points

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

Strategy after playing TENES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing TENES:

19% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
8% chance
Suggested:
GLARE
7% chance
Suggested:
SHALY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.0%
CAROL 6.02 bits
7.8%
GLARE 5.13 bits
7.0%
SHALY 5.08 bits
6.1%
LOATH 4.85 bits
5.6%
GROAN 5.16 bits
4.8%
LAIRY 4.20 bits
4.1%
STAIR 4.52 bits
3.8%
SORAL 4.56 bits
3.1%
CLARY 5.12 bits
2.7%
COALY 4.27 bits

Research on TENES

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

Optimal play

Opening with TENES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,123 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 TENES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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

One syllable Say it TEENZ. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
TENES 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); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).