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

CESTA

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

As an opener, it rules out about 95.7% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A hook-shaped basket used to catch and throw the ball in jai alai.

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 CESTA performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CESTA 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 103 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #880 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.60 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 CESTA 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.

5.30 Entropy (bits)
103 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
95.7% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 95% of evaluated openers
0.65 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CESTA 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.

3.60 Avg guesses
99.87% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#880 Rank among openers
Opening with CESTA left 3 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 3.60 average. It ranks #880 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
79
3 guesses
969
4 guesses
1,142
5 guesses
145
6 guesses
16
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:
AEST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
89%
Green tile
28%
All gray
11%

Feedback distribution

CESTA can come back 108 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

255 answers
236 answers
187 answers
134 answers
97 answers
85 answers
84 answers
83 answers
74 answers
68 answers
64 answers
60 answers
57 answers
45 answers
41 answers
39 answers
38 answers
35 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
31 answers
29 answers
28 answers
24 answers
21 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3E1S1T1A1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing CESTA

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CESTA:

11% chance
Suggested:
ROUND
10% chance
Suggested:
RIONE
8% chance
Suggested:
RAYON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

10.7%
ROUND 5.57 bits
9.9%
RIONE 5.28 bits
7.9%
RAYON 5.00 bits
5.6%
LARGE 4.65 bits
4.1%
SLUNK 4.77 bits
3.6%
GROUT 4.92 bits
3.5%
GENRE 4.24 bits
3.5%
SPIRE 4.72 bits
3.1%
TALON 4.45 bits
2.9%
ENTER 4.75 bits

Research on CESTA

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

Optimal play

Opening with CESTA, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,267 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 CESTA can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.60, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it SEHSTUH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CESTA 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.

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 frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).