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

ZONED

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

As an opener, it rules out about 90.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

simple past and past participle of zone

Adjective

Included in a zone.

“non-zoned land”

Adjective

Synonym of zoned out (“intoxicated by drugs”).

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 ZONED performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ZONED 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 78.9% of games, misses completely in 21.1%, and leaves about 221 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,513 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.73 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 ZONED 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.

4.34 Entropy (bits)
221 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 41% of evaluated openers
1.61 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ZONED 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.

3.73 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#8,513 Rank among openers
Opening with ZONED left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,513 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
43
3 guesses
804
4 guesses
1,265
5 guesses
227
6 guesses
14
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
31%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

ZONED can come back 72 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

500 answers
394 answers
169 answers
156 answers
140 answers
121 answers
75 answers
68 answers
64 answers
60 answers
56 answers
50 answers
41 answers
37 answers
33 answers
28 answers
27 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Z10O1N1E1D2
Total: 15 points

Words With Friends

Total: 16 points

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

Strategy after playing ZONED

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ZONED:

21% 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.

21.1%
SLART 6.06 bits
16.6%
SLART 5.96 bits
7.1%
SLART 5.23 bits
6.6%
STAIR 4.58 bits
5.9%
SAINT 5.36 bits
5.1%
SALTY 4.51 bits
3.2%
LEARE 4.68 bits
2.9%
ARENE 4.56 bits
2.7%
SLART 4.27 bits
2.5%
ARSON 4.44 bits

Research on ZONED

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

Optimal play

Opening with ZONED, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.75 guesses and ranks #8,242 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 ZONED can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.75, 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

One syllable Say it ZOHND.

Rhymes with OWNED TONED HONED BONED

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, ZONED is a kind of place or region.

Synonyms district partition

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ZONED sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.2 of 5).

In a sentence

I was zoned out because I was tired.
© tatoeba.org contributor Zifre (CC BY 2.0 FR)
This area is zoned for industrial use.
© tatoeba.org contributor CK (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); 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).