Possible answer Not used yet C tier for first-turn info

APING

APING is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.

As an opener, it rules out about 90.9% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈeɪ.pɪŋ/

Verb

present participle and gerund of ape

Noun

Foolish imitation or mimicry.

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

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 APING performs as a guess

APING 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 78.9% of games, misses completely in 21.1%, and leaves about 216 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,149 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.67 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.

First-turn measures

All four describe APING 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.

4.49 Entropy (bits)
216 Avg remaining
0.04% Exact match
90.9% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 51% of evaluated openers
1.46 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How APING 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.

3.67 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#5,149 Rank among openers
Opening with APING solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.67 average. It ranks #5,149 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
1
2 guesses
57
3 guesses
900
4 guesses
1,167
5 guesses
212
6 guesses
17
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:
AIN

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
23%
All gray
21%

Example solver route

R O A T E
N A S A L
A G I N G
A P I N G

One example route used by the solver.

This solver benchmark reaches APING in 4 guesses.

Feedback distribution

APING can come back 90 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

500 answers
407 answers
144 answers
121 answers
114 answers
102 answers
78 answers
69 answers
69 answers
65 answers
62 answers
52 answers
48 answers
48 answers
32 answers
30 answers
28 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
16 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

A1P3I1N1G2
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing APING

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing APING:

21% chance
Suggested:
SOREL
17% chance
Suggested:
CARLE
6% chance
Suggested:
TILDE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.1%
SOREL 6.03 bits
17.1%
CARLE 5.58 bits
6.1%
TILDE 5.04 bits
5.1%
SOREL 5.04 bits
4.8%
CRUET 4.94 bits
4.3%
SOREL 5.35 bits
3.3%
ROULE 5.28 bits
2.9%
SOREL 4.64 bits
2.9%
PARSE 4.95 bits
2.7%
BLORE 4.97 bits

Research on APING

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

Optimal play

Opening with APING, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,572 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.82 guesses at best and is rank #1,967 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.67, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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 AYPIHNG.

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, APING is a kind of primate or actor.

Synonyms caricature

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
APING 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 sight (4.2 of 5).

In a sentence

Mom, Tom is aping me!
© tatoeba.org contributor PWRWR (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).