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

CARPS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of carp

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of carp

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 CARPS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CARPS 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 82.9% of games, misses completely in 17.1%, and leaves about 148 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #401 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.58 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 CARPS 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.

4.96 Entropy (bits)
148 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 82% of evaluated openers
0.98 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CARPS 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.

3.58 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#401 Rank among openers
Opening with CARPS left 3 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 3.58 average. It ranks #401 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
70
3 guesses
1,023
4 guesses
1,097
5 guesses
149
6 guesses
12
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
1 vowels
Common:
ARS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
29%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

CARPS can come back 112 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

406 answers
234 answers
183 answers
181 answers
121 answers
108 answers
83 answers
75 answers
57 answers
57 answers
53 answers
52 answers
49 answers
44 answers
37 answers
36 answers
29 answers
27 answers
27 answers
27 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
17 answers
15 answers
14 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1R1P3S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing CARPS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CARPS:

17% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
10% chance
Suggested:
TOILE
8% chance
Suggested:
TOILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.1%
TOILE 6.14 bits
9.9%
TOILE 5.27 bits
7.7%
TOILE 5.38 bits
7.6%
ALATE 5.46 bits
5.1%
TRADE 4.77 bits
4.5%
TONEY 4.42 bits
3.5%
THALE 4.88 bits
3.2%
TUILE 4.87 bits
2.4%
TONEY 4.56 bits
2.4%
TOILE 4.66 bits

Research on CARPS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CARPS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,210 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.73 guesses at best and is rank #148 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.58, at or below the proven-optimal 3.64, 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 KAHRPS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, CARPS is a kind of seafood or object.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CARPS 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 (3.4 of 5).

In a sentence

Live carps shouldn't be sold to people.
© tatoeba.org contributor Ergulis (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The carps and the goldfish happily swim in the pond.
© tatoeba.org contributor WM3DAS (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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 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).