5 FiveLetterWords
Past Wordle answer Possible answer Accepted guess C tier for first-turn info

ZESTY

Yes, ZESTY was the Wordle answer on April 28, 2022 (Wordle #313).

As an opener, it rules out about 90.8% of possible answers.

Open Solver with ZESTY Open Word Finder

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈzɛsti/

Adjective

Having a piquant or pungent taste; spicy.

Adjective

Zestful.

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

Used once

Past Wordle answer: April 28, 2022 (#313).

See the full page for that puzzle: April 28, 2022 (#313).

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

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How ZESTY performs as a guess

ZESTY 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 81.4% of games, misses completely in 18.6%, and leaves about 219 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #12,363 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.82 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

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

Z___Y Z in the 1st position and Y in the 5th position Z__T_ Z in the 1st position and T in the 4th position _E__Y E in the 2nd position and Y in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in ZESTY.

First-turn measures

All four describe ZESTY 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.

4.16 Entropy (bits)
219 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
90.8% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 30% of evaluated openers
1.79 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ZESTY 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.

3.82 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#12,363 Rank among openers
Opening with ZESTY left 4 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.82 average. It ranks #12,363 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
663
4 guesses
1,350
5 guesses
278
6 guesses
21
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:
EST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
81%
Green tile
29%
All gray
19%

Example solver route

R O A T E
P I T C H
T E S T Y
Z E S T Y

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches ZESTY in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

ZESTY can come back 66 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

442 answers
402 answers
191 answers
170 answers
168 answers
142 answers
121 answers
116 answers
96 answers
42 answers
40 answers
38 answers
35 answers
31 answers
28 answers
25 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Z10E1S1T1Y4
Total: 17 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Try next

CAIRN RAILE TRAIL DROLE SNARL SPARE

Strategy after playing ZESTY

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ZESTY:

19% chance
Suggested:
CAIRN
17% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
8% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

18.6% →
CAIRN 6.07 bits
16.9% →
RAILE 5.33 bits
8.0% →
TRAIL 5.22 bits
7.2% →
DROLE 4.24 bits
7.1% →
SNARL 4.95 bits
6.0% →
SPARE 4.71 bits
5.1% →
TALER 4.75 bits
4.9% →
RAILE 4.69 bits
4.0% →
ROAST 4.55 bits
1.8% →
SLART 3.98 bits

Research on ZESTY

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

Optimal play

Opening with ZESTY, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.83 guesses and ranks #11,915 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 ZESTY can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.82, at or below the proven-optimal 3.83, 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 ZEHSTEE. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

Synonyms savory TASTY spirited

Opposites tasteless

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ZESTY 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 taste (3.7 of 5).

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 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).