Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

WENCH

WENCH is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 89.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /wɛnt͡ʃ/

Noun

A girl or young woman, especially a buxom or lively one.

“Jane played the role of a wench in an Elizabethan comedy.”

Noun

Used as a term of endearment for a female person, especially a wife, daughter, or girlfriend: darling, sweetheart.

Verb

To frequent prostitutes; to whore; also, to womanize.

Verb

To act as a wench.

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

Yes

Included among the answers considered by the solver.

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 WENCH performs as a guess

WENCH is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 77.0% of games, misses completely in 23.0%, and leaves about 247 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,319 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 WENCH 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)
247 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
89.6% 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 WENCH 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#7,319 Rank among openers
Opening with WENCH left 1 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 3.71 average. It ranks #7,319 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
841
4 guesses
1,197
5 guesses
239
6 guesses
17
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
1 vowels
Common:
EN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
26%
All gray
23%

Example solver route

R O A T E
S I L E N
B E N C H
W E N C H

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches WENCH in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

WENCH can come back 91 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

546 answers
434 answers
169 answers
136 answers
114 answers
107 answers
69 answers
64 answers
55 answers
55 answers
52 answers
36 answers
31 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

W4E1N1C3H4
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing WENCH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing WENCH:

23% chance
Suggested:
SOLAR
18% chance
Suggested:
ARISE
7% chance
Suggested:
ROAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.0%
SOLAR 5.91 bits
18.3%
ARISE 5.32 bits
7.1%
ROAST 5.21 bits
5.7%
SLART 4.93 bits
4.8%
SORAL 5.42 bits
4.5%
ARIEL 4.63 bits
2.9%
STAIR 4.83 bits
2.7%
LAREE 4.59 bits
2.3%
LAIRY 4.22 bits
2.3%
SATER 4.82 bits

Research on WENCH

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

Optimal play

Opening with WENCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,561 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,775 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, 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

One syllable Say it WEHNCH.

Rhymes with BENCH TENCH HENCH

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, WENCH is a kind of girl or know.

Synonyms bird CHICK doll dame SKIRT

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
WENCH 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.
Age of acquisition
Typically learned around age 11, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
Imageability
Imageability score: 58 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.8 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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).