WHINE
Yes, WHINE was the Wordle answer on January 1, 2023 (Wordle #561).
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈwaɪ̯n/[ˈwaɪ̯n]/ˈʍaɪ̯n/
- Noun
-
A long-drawn, high-pitched complaining cry or sound.
- Noun
-
A peevish or self-pitying complaint or criticism.
“I need to have a quick whine about my boss before we start talking about the holiday.”
- Verb
-
To utter a high-pitched cry.
- Verb
-
To make a sound resembling such a cry.
“The jet engines whined at take off.”
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
Etymology
From Middle English whynen, hwinen, whinen, from Old English hwīnan (“to rush, to whizz, to squeal, to whine”), from Proto-West Germanic *hwīnan, from Proto-Germanic *hwīnaną, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱwey- (“to hiss, whistle, whisper”). Cognate with Old Norse hvína, whence Icelandic hvína, Norwegian Nynorsk kvina, Swedish vina, and Danish hvine.
Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)
How it sounds
One syllable Say it WYN.
Rhymes with SHINE SPINE STEIN ALIGN SWINE
In a sentence
He used to whine all day.
Don't just whine, do something!
Use WHINE in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 92.2% 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
Used oncePast Wordle answer: January 1, 2023 (#561).
See the full page for that puzzle: January 1, 2023 (#561).
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 →WHINE in Connections
1 recorded appearance in completed main-edition puzzles through . A category label alone does not establish a word's meaning.
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· Puzzle #256
Reveal this appearance's category
WHINE appeared in DOG SOUNDS (yellow group).
How WHINE performs as a guess
WHINE 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 80.6% of games, misses completely in 19.4%, and leaves about 185 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,459 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe WHINE 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 WHINE 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 WHINE in 3 guesses.
Feedback distribution
WHINE can come back 103 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 WHINE; 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 WHINE
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to WHINE.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing WHINE:
Research on WHINE
Game-tree analysis and word research for WHINE, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with WHINE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,955 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 #3,472 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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
- WHINE sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Age of acquisition
- Typically learned around age 6, by Glasgow Norms speaker ratings.
- Imageability
- Imageability score: 49 of 100. Raters gave it a middle-range score.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sound (3.9 of 5).
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); Glasgow Norms (CC BY 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).