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

UNCIA

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈʌnʃi.ə/

Noun

Synonym of ounce, the English and American avoirdupois unit of mass.

Noun

Synonym of twelfth.

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

Etymology

From Latin uncia (“various Roman units”). Doublet of ounce, inch, onça, onza, oka, ouguiya, and awqiyyah.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use UNCIA in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 92.0% 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 UNCIA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts UNCIA 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 84.4% of games, misses completely in 15.6%, and leaves about 190 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,720 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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 UNCIA 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.

4.53 Entropy (bits)
190 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How UNCIA 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#7,720 Rank among openers
Opening with UNCIA left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #7,720 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
53
3 guesses
845
4 guesses
1,191
5 guesses
237
6 guesses
23

Composition

5/5 unique
3 vowels
Common:
AINU

Feedback chances

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

Feedback distribution

UNCIA can come back 89 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

407 answers
373 answers
224 answers
194 answers
104 answers
98 answers
92 answers
88 answers
79 answers
51 answers
44 answers
44 answers
43 answers
42 answers
41 answers
32 answers
32 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

U1N1C3I1A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing UNCIA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing UNCIA:

17% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
16% chance
Suggested:
SOREL
9% chance
Suggested:
STILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.1% →
TARSE 5.68 bits
15.6% →
SOREL 5.90 bits
9.4% →
STILE 5.30 bits
8.1% →
SOLER 5.28 bits
4.4% →
CARLE 4.87 bits
4.1% →
SOREL 4.59 bits
3.9% →
SOWER 4.96 bits
3.7% →
GRISE 4.43 bits
3.3% →
SHOER 4.99 bits
2.1% →
TORSE 3.88 bits

Research on UNCIA

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

Optimal play

Opening with UNCIA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,454 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.86 guesses at best and is rank #3,271 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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
UNCIA 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).