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

ZONER

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.2% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Someone who zones things.

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 ZONER performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ZONER 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 83.8% of games, misses completely in 16.2%, and leaves about 162 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,517 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 ZONER 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.

4.65 Entropy (bits)
162 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.2% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 62% of evaluated openers
1.29 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ZONER 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
100% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#8,517 Rank among openers
Opening with ZONER solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.69 means those games clustered within about 0.69 of a guess of the 3.73 average. It ranks #8,517 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
48
3 guesses
805
4 guesses
1,256
5 guesses
224
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
2 vowels
Common:
ENOR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
84%
Green tile
31%
All gray
16%

Feedback distribution

ZONER can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

384 answers
314 answers
191 answers
155 answers
121 answers
111 answers
105 answers
94 answers
65 answers
64 answers
63 answers
53 answers
49 answers
37 answers
37 answers
34 answers
34 answers
32 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
23 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

Z10O1N1E1R1
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing ZONER

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ZONER:

16% chance
Suggested:
SAULT
13% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
8% chance
Suggested:
SHALT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.2%
SAULT 5.93 bits
13.2%
SLATE 5.85 bits
8.0%
SHALT 5.23 bits
6.5%
CRATE 4.87 bits
5.1%
SAINT 5.32 bits
4.7%
STOOL 5.10 bits
4.4%
SALTY 4.55 bits
4.0%
SAULT 3.77 bits
2.7%
SLEET 4.55 bits
2.7%
TROOP 3.87 bits

Research on ZONER

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

Optimal play

Opening with ZONER, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.74 guesses and ranks #7,483 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 ZONER can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.73, at or below the proven-optimal 3.74, 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 ZOHNUR. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ZONER 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).