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

CALFS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of calf

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

Use CALFS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.9% 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 CALFS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CALFS 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 78.6% of games, misses completely in 21.4%, and leaves about 193 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #3,511 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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 CALFS 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.

4.58 Entropy (bits)
193 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.9% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CALFS 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#3,511 Rank among openers
Opening with CALFS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.65 average. It ranks #3,511 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
938
4 guesses
1,178
5 guesses
177
6 guesses
12

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ALS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
79%
Green tile
26%
All gray
21%

Feedback distribution

CALFS can come back 88 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

510 answers
252 answers
194 answers
163 answers
132 answers
113 answers
101 answers
91 answers
70 answers
63 answers
52 answers
39 answers
36 answers
34 answers
33 answers
30 answers
28 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
23 answers
21 answers
17 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1L1F4S1
Total: 10 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing CALFS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CALFS:

21% chance
Suggested:
RONTE
11% chance
Suggested:
ROUET
8% chance
Suggested:
TRODE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

21.4% →
RONTE 6.24 bits
10.6% →
ROUET 5.64 bits
8.1% →
TRODE 5.66 bits
6.8% →
GOIER 5.14 bits
5.5% →
RONTE 4.79 bits
4.7% →
ALATE 4.64 bits
4.2% →
PRATE 4.90 bits
3.8% →
TRINE 5.06 bits
2.9% →
IRONE 5.15 bits
2.6% →
TONER 4.84 bits

Research on CALFS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CALFS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,099 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.79 guesses at best and is rank #1,251 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, 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
CALFS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (4.1 of 5).

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