TENSE
TENSE is on the solver's possible-answer list and has no appearance in our globally completed Wordle history.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /tɛns/
- Noun
-
The property of indicating the point in time at which an action or state of being occurs or exists.
“Dyirbal verbs are not inflected for tense.”
- Noun
-
An inflected form of a verb that indicates tense.
“English only has a past tense and a non-past tense; it has no future tense.”
- Verb
-
To apply a tense to.
“tensing a verb”
- Adjective
-
Showing signs of stress or strain; not relaxed.
“You need to relax, all this overtime and stress is making you tense.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English tens, from Old French tens (modern French temps), from Latin tempus. Doublet of tempo and tempus.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it TEHNS.
Rhymes with SENSE HENCE FENCE DENSE PENCE
Related meanings
Synonyms strain electric TIGHT nervous WIRED pumped
Opposites relaxed lax RELAX
In a sentence
That is the wrong tense.
I was a bit tense.
Use TENSE in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 93.8% of possible answers.
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
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How TENSE performs as a guess
TENSE is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,384 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 81.0% of games, misses completely in 19.0%, and leaves about 147 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,592 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe TENSE 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 TENSE 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 TENSE in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
TENSE can come back 101 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 TENSE; 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 TENSE
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to TENSE.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing TENSE:
Research on TENSE
Game-tree analysis and word research for TENSE, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with TENSE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.67 guesses and ranks #2,972 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 TENSE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.66, at or below the proven-optimal 3.67, 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
- TENSE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 9 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Learner level
- Appears in intermediate learner vocabulary (CEFR-J level B1); a word learners usually reach after the basics.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 9, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 44 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with internal bodily sensation (4.3 of 5).
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); Learner levels: CEFR-J Wordlist ver 1.5, Tono Laboratory, TUFS; Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).