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

CAFES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of cafe

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the second syllable Say it KAFAYZ.

Rhymes with PLAYS RAISE PHASE STAYS BLAZE

In a sentence

There are several cafes in the park.
© tatoeba.org contributor marcj794 (CC BY 2.0 FR)
There are a number of cafes in the park.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use CAFES in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 94.5% of possible answers.

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

No completed appearance

No appearance in our globally completed history. A recent puzzle may still be live elsewhere.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How CAFES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CAFES 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 86.3% of games, misses completely in 13.7%, and leaves about 132 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #6,146 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.69 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 CAFES 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.

4.90 Entropy (bits)
132 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CAFES 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.

3.69 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#6,146 Rank among openers
Opening with CAFES left 1 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 3.69 average. It ranks #6,146 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
68
3 guesses
825
4 guesses
1,246
5 guesses
201
6 guesses
13

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
86%
Green tile
33%
All gray
14%

Feedback distribution

CAFES can come back 92 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

327 answers
231 answers
172 answers
163 answers
154 answers
140 answers
108 answers
102 answers
72 answers
62 answers
61 answers
52 answers
49 answers
49 answers
45 answers
42 answers
38 answers
28 answers
28 answers
23 answers
22 answers
22 answers
22 answers
21 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
18 answers
18 answers
17 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1F4E1S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing CAFES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CAFES:

14% chance
Suggested:
DROIT
10% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
7% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

13.7% →
DROIT 5.64 bits
9.7% →
RIONE 5.16 bits
7.2% →
TRAIL 5.26 bits
6.8% →
SPILT 5.03 bits
6.5% →
TONER 4.44 bits
5.9% →
DEALT 4.86 bits
4.5% →
TARDY 4.15 bits
4.3% →
STONE 4.45 bits
3.0% →
SHALT 4.53 bits
2.6% →
TOUCH 4.41 bits

Research on CAFES

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

Optimal play

Opening with CAFES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,436 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 CAFES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.69, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CAFES sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 2 times 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 (3.9 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).