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

CONGO

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of congou: a kind of Chinese black tea.

Interjection

congratulations

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

Etymology

After Kongo, from Kongo nkongo (“hunter”). Compare Kongo dikongo (“spear”), Zulu umkhonto, Proto-Bantu *mʊ̀kóndó.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it KAHNGGOH.

Rhymes with BONGO

In a sentence

The Congo is in Africa.
© tatoeba.org contributor Miktsoanit (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The Congo is a Third World country.
© tatoeba.org contributor Micsmithel (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use CONGO in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 83.4% 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 CONGO performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CONGO 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 62.5% of games, misses completely in 37.5%, and leaves about 395 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,628 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 CONGO 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.

3.86 Entropy (bits)
395 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
83.4% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CONGO 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,628 Rank among openers
Opening with CONGO left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,628 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
771
4 guesses
1,277
5 guesses
236
6 guesses
23

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
NO

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
62%
Green tile
28%
All gray
38%

Feedback distribution

CONGO can come back 76 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

894 answers
198 answers
156 answers
146 answers
125 answers
113 answers
105 answers
58 answers
58 answers
51 answers
36 answers
31 answers
25 answers
25 answers
24 answers
24 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
18 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1N1G2O1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing CONGO

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CONGO:

38% chance
Suggested:
SALET
8% chance
Suggested:
TASER
7% chance
Suggested:
TARSE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

37.5% →
SALET 6.33 bits
8.3% →
TASER 5.39 bits
6.5% →
TARSE 5.16 bits
6.1% →
TIARE 5.41 bits
5.2% →
RATEL 4.71 bits
4.7% →
PAIRE 5.16 bits
4.4% →
GLARE 5.20 bits
2.4% →
LAIDE 4.28 bits
2.4% →
SNORE 4.39 bits
2.1% →
REAST 4.38 bits

Research on CONGO

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

Optimal play

Opening with CONGO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,420 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.92 guesses at best and is rank #4,650 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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
CONGO sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 6 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).