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

VINCA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Any of several evergreen shrubs, of the genus Vinca, including the periwinkle.

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 VINCA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts VINCA 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 77.5% of games, misses completely in 22.5%, and leaves about 238 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,382 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 VINCA 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.

4.34 Entropy (bits)
238 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 41% of evaluated openers
1.61 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How VINCA 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#8,382 Rank among openers
Opening with VINCA left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,382 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
804
4 guesses
1,237
5 guesses
242
6 guesses
15
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

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
78%
Green tile
22%
All gray
22%

Feedback distribution

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

535 answers
418 answers
167 answers
130 answers
104 answers
89 answers
87 answers
86 answers
85 answers
63 answers
48 answers
40 answers
35 answers
34 answers
31 answers
31 answers
27 answers
26 answers
26 answers
26 answers
21 answers
18 answers
14 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

V4I1N1C3A1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing VINCA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing VINCA:

23% chance
Suggested:
SOREL
18% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
7% chance
Suggested:
STIRE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.5%
SOREL 6.08 bits
17.6%
TARSE 5.66 bits
7.0%
STIRE 5.38 bits
5.5%
SORED 5.28 bits
4.4%
SALET 4.26 bits
3.7%
GRATE 4.58 bits
3.7%
TORSE 4.44 bits
3.6%
CARLE 4.87 bits
3.6%
SOLER 5.35 bits
2.7%
SLART 4.44 bits

Research on VINCA

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

Optimal play

Opening with VINCA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,478 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.87 guesses at best and is rank #3,506 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, 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.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it VIHNGKUH.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
VINCA 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).