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

ZINEB

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈzɪnɛb/

Noun

An organic fungicide and insecticide sprayed on cereal grasses, fruit trees, etc.

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 ZINEB performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ZINEB 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 76.4% of games, misses completely in 23.6%, and leaves about 255 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,294 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 ZINEB 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.

4.07 Entropy (bits)
255 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 26% of evaluated openers
1.87 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ZINEB 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#11,294 Rank among openers
Opening with ZINEB left 3 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 3.79 average. It ranks #11,294 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
39
3 guesses
726
4 guesses
1,287
5 guesses
285
6 guesses
14
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.45 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
25%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

ZINEB can come back 65 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

558 answers
407 answers
174 answers
170 answers
137 answers
91 answers
84 answers
80 answers
77 answers
70 answers
60 answers
48 answers
42 answers
29 answers
26 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
16 answers
10 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ZINEB:

24% chance
Suggested:
SLART
17% chance
Suggested:
SLART
7% chance
Suggested:
SLART

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.6%
SLART 5.97 bits
17.2%
SLART 5.89 bits
7.4%
SLART 5.35 bits
7.2%
SOLAR 4.59 bits
5.8%
ROAST 5.26 bits
3.9%
SALTY 4.42 bits
3.6%
SLART 4.45 bits
3.4%
SLANT 4.61 bits
3.3%
BLOAT 4.96 bits
3.0%
SEARE 4.62 bits

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Z10I1N1E1B3
Total: 16 points

Words With Friends

Total: 18 points

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

The science of ZINEB

What game-tree analysis and word research measure about ZINEB — each figure with what it means.

Optimal play

Opening with ZINEB, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.80 guesses — rank #10,811 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 ZINEB can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79 — at or below the proven-optimal 3.80 only 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) — not the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable — say it ZYNUHB. Estimated pronunciation

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

How people know it

Frequency
ZINEB sits in the rare band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English — 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).