5 FiveLetterWords
Accepted guess Not a possible answer A tier for first-turn info

CATES

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Provisions; food; viands; especially, luxurious food; delicacies; dainties.

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

Etymology

Compare acates, and see cater.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

One syllable Say it KAYTS.

Rhymes with RATES DATES GATES HATES MATES

Related meanings

Synonyms guy sick cast CHUCK ct kat

Use CATES in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 96.1% of possible answers.

Open Solver with CATES Open Word Finder

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 CATES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CATES 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 89.3% of games, misses completely in 10.7%, and leaves about 93 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,378 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.61 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.
See strategy patterns

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

C___S C in the 1st position and S in the 5th position C__E_ C in the 1st position and E in the 4th position _A__S A in the 2nd position and S in the 5th position CA_ES C in the 1st position, A in the 2nd position, E in the 4th position, and S in the 5th position

Explore lists that match the beginning, ending or letters in CATES.

First-turn measures

All four describe CATES 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.

5.44 Entropy (bits)
93 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
96.1% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CATES 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.

3.61 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#1,378 Rank among openers
Opening with CATES 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 3.61 average. It ranks #1,378 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
79
3 guesses
956
4 guesses
1,143
5 guesses
159
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AEST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
35%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

CATES can come back 116 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

256 answers
187 answers
140 answers
135 answers
111 answers
108 answers
105 answers
80 answers
76 answers
73 answers
59 answers
57 answers
50 answers
46 answers
45 answers
35 answers
35 answers
34 answers
34 answers
34 answers
29 answers
29 answers
29 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
22 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3A1T1E1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Try next

ROUND NOIRE ADORN RIONE BLARE TROUT

Strategy after playing CATES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CATES:

11% chance
Suggested:
ROUND
8% chance
Suggested:
NOIRE
6% chance
Suggested:
ADORN

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.7% →
ROUND 5.56 bits
7.8% →
NOIRE 5.15 bits
5.9% →
ADORN 5.07 bits
5.7% →
RIONE 4.16 bits
4.7% →
BLARE 4.78 bits
4.5% →
TROUT 4.97 bits
4.4% →
SHINY 4.71 bits
3.4% →
RANDY 4.17 bits
3.2% →
SNORE 4.52 bits
3.1% →
SHIRT 4.48 bits

Research on CATES

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

Optimal play

Opening with CATES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.62 guesses and ranks #448 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 CATES can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.61, at or below the proven-optimal 3.62, 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
CATES 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.

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).