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

COTCH

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

As an opener, it rules out about 85.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Verb

Pronunciation spelling of catch.

Verb

To hang out or chill out; to relax.

Alternative forms: kotch

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 COTCH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts COTCH 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 66.0% of games, misses completely in 34.0%, and leaves about 356 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,712 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.78 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 COTCH 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.

3.93 Entropy (bits)
356 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
85.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 20% of evaluated openers
2.01 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How COTCH 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.

3.78 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#10,712 Rank among openers
Opening with COTCH solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.78 average. It ranks #10,712 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
40
3 guesses
803
4 guesses
1,183
5 guesses
298
6 guesses
30
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

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
OT

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
66%
Green tile
31%
All gray
34%

Feedback distribution

COTCH can come back 77 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

808 answers
298 answers
209 answers
151 answers
89 answers
71 answers
67 answers
58 answers
57 answers
46 answers
43 answers
39 answers
32 answers
27 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1T1C3H4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing COTCH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing COTCH:

34% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
13% chance
Suggested:
SNARE
9% chance
Suggested:
ARSON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

34.0%
RAILE 6.31 bits
12.6%
SNARE 5.68 bits
8.8%
ARSON 5.15 bits
6.4%
SLYER 4.71 bits
3.7%
RAISE 5.22 bits
3.0%
MAILE 4.98 bits
2.8%
ALURE 4.39 bits
2.4%
MAIRE 4.91 bits
2.4%
SANER 4.73 bits
1.9%
LEASE 4.47 bits

Research on COTCH

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

Optimal play

Opening with COTCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.82 guesses and ranks #11,386 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 COTCH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.78, at or below the proven-optimal 3.82, 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 KAHCH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
COTCH 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).