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

CLOTS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 94.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of clot

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of clot

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 CLOTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CLOTS 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 83.1% of games, misses completely in 16.9%, and leaves about 139 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #271 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.57 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 CLOTS 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.

5.00 Entropy (bits)
139 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
94.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 84% of evaluated openers
0.94 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CLOTS 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.

3.57 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#271 Rank among openers
Opening with CLOTS 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 3.57 average. It ranks #271 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
58
3 guesses
1,062
4 guesses
1,073
5 guesses
151
6 guesses
10
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:
LOST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
30%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

CLOTS can come back 104 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

401 answers
186 answers
186 answers
156 answers
154 answers
90 answers
73 answers
69 answers
69 answers
67 answers
59 answers
54 answers
54 answers
47 answers
46 answers
42 answers
32 answers
29 answers
28 answers
28 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
20 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3L1O1T1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing CLOTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CLOTS:

17% chance
Suggested:
DAINE
8% chance
Suggested:
PAIRE
8% chance
Suggested:
RAILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.9%
DAINE 6.16 bits
7.8%
PAIRE 5.58 bits
7.8%
RAILE 5.45 bits
6.6%
MORNE 5.24 bits
6.5%
TIARE 5.56 bits
3.8%
REAST 4.86 bits
3.1%
RAINE 5.07 bits
2.9%
GRADE 4.68 bits
2.9%
BRANE 4.69 bits
2.8%
MAIRE 5.19 bits

Research on CLOTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with CLOTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.64 guesses and ranks #1,409 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 #151 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.57, 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 KLAHTS.

Rhymes with SHOTS SPOTS SLOTS WATTS PLOTS

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, CLOTS is a kind of ball or turn.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
CLOTS sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

There are clots in the blood.
© tatoeba.org contributor pauldhunt (CC BY 2.0 FR)
They're globular structures that tend to knit together, forming large clots.
© tatoeba.org contributor DJ_Saidez (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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).