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

ZINCO

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

As an opener, it rules out about 87.6% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A line or half-tone block etched on zinc plate, used in zincography.

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 ZINCO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ZINCO 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 71.3% of games, misses completely in 28.7%, and leaves about 295 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,053 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 ZINCO 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.

3.98 Entropy (bits)
295 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
87.6% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 21% of evaluated openers
1.97 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ZINCO 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.83% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#10,053 Rank among openers
Opening with ZINCO 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 3.76 average. It ranks #10,053 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
35
3 guesses
783
4 guesses
1,256
5 guesses
256
6 guesses
20
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
2 vowels
Common:
INO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
20%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

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

681 answers
332 answers
209 answers
145 answers
116 answers
114 answers
96 answers
92 answers
68 answers
60 answers
43 answers
37 answers
28 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Z10I1N1C3O1
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 18 points

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

Strategy after playing ZINCO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ZINCO:

29% chance
Suggested:
TARSE
14% chance
Suggested:
SOLER
9% chance
Suggested:
TARSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

28.7%
TARSE 6.34 bits
14.0%
SOLER 5.15 bits
8.8%
TARSE 5.53 bits
6.1%
TALER 5.20 bits
4.9%
CRATE 5.46 bits
4.8%
SALET 4.75 bits
4.0%
STAGE 4.68 bits
3.9%
SARED 4.60 bits
2.9%
LEAST 4.97 bits
2.5%
SOREL 4.74 bits

Research on ZINCO

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

Optimal play

Opening with ZINCO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.81 guesses and ranks #11,190 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,109 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.81, 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 ZIHNGKOH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD), with machine estimates from the g2p_en model.