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

WANDS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of wand

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it WAHNDZ.

Rhymes with BONDS PONDS

Related meanings

Synonyms VERGE BATON

In a sentence

These magic wands are edible.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (CC BY 2.0 FR)
Dust from a unicorn's horn gives the wands their extraordinary properties.
© tatoeba.org contributor katix824 (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use WANDS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.9% 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.

WANDS in Connections

1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.

How WANDS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts WANDS 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 77.4% of games, misses completely in 22.6%, and leaves about 217 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,105 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 WANDS 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.

4.39 Entropy (bits)
217 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How WANDS 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#6,105 Rank among openers
Opening with WANDS left 1 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,105 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
48
3 guesses
874
4 guesses
1,208
5 guesses
212
6 guesses
11

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ANS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
24%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

WANDS can come back 81 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

538 answers
254 answers
253 answers
151 answers
144 answers
125 answers
117 answers
70 answers
67 answers
57 answers
57 answers
44 answers
30 answers
30 answers
29 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4A1N1D2S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing WANDS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WANDS:

23% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
11% chance
Suggested:
SUITE
11% chance
Suggested:
ALERT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

22.6% →
TOILE 5.96 bits
10.7% →
SUITE 5.39 bits
10.6% →
ALERT 5.52 bits
6.3% →
CLOTE 4.68 bits
6.0% →
TOILE 5.52 bits
5.2% →
DROLE 5.27 bits
4.9% →
STALE 4.89 bits
2.9% →
GRICE 4.86 bits
2.8% →
COURE 4.36 bits
2.4% →
ROUET 4.68 bits

Research on WANDS

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

Optimal play

Opening with WANDS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.72 guesses and ranks #6,047 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 WANDS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.72, 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
WANDS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.1 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); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).