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

ZANJA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 75.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈzɑn.hə/

Noun

An irrigation canal in Latin America.

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 ZANJA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ZANJA 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 56.0% of games, misses completely in 44.0%, and leaves about 590 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #14,731 of 14,855 openers, averaging 4.03 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.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

First-turn measures

All four describe ZANJA 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.

2.77 Entropy (bits)
590 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
75.1% Avg ruled out
In the bottom 1% for first-turn entropy
3.17 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ZANJA 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.

4.03 Avg guesses
99.79% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#14,731 Rank among openers
Opening with ZANJA left 5 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 4.03 average. It ranks #14,731 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
29
3 guesses
455
4 guesses
1,333
5 guesses
492
6 guesses
40
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

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
56%
Green tile
20%
All gray
44%

Feedback distribution

ZANJA can come back 44 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

1045 answers
416 answers
265 answers
204 answers
103 answers
92 answers
38 answers
32 answers
28 answers
24 answers
17 answers
14 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers
7 answers
7 answers
4 answers
3 answers
3 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
2 answers
1 answer
1 answer
1 answer
1 answer

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Z10A1N1J8A1
Total: 21 points

Words With Friends

Total: 24 points

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

Strategy after playing ZANJA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ZANJA:

44% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
18% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
11% chance
Suggested:
TOISE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

44.0%
TOILE 5.97 bits
17.5%
SLATE 5.61 bits
11.2%
TOISE 5.37 bits
8.6%
SLYER 4.79 bits
4.3%
GRISE 4.55 bits
3.9%
HOISE 4.49 bits
1.6%
TORSE 3.83 bits
1.3%
MOILE 4.37 bits
1.2%
CROME 3.66 bits
1.0%
STRAE 3.89 bits

Research on ZANJA

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

Optimal play

Opening with ZANJA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 4.04 guesses and ranks #14,777 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 4.18 guesses at best and is rank #7,368 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 4.03, at or below the proven-optimal 4.04, 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 ZANJUH. Estimated pronunciation

This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ZANJA 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), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model; Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).