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

COTTS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 89.0% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of cott

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 COTTS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts COTTS 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 72.4% of games, misses completely in 27.6%, and leaves about 261 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,674 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 COTTS 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.

4.26 Entropy (bits)
261 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
89.0% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 36% of evaluated openers
1.69 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How COTTS 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.69 Spread of game lengths
#7,674 Rank among openers
Opening with COTTS left 2 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 3.71 average. It ranks #7,674 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
846
4 guesses
1,212
5 guesses
233
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

4/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
OST

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
72%
Green tile
29%
All gray
28%

Feedback distribution

COTTS can come back 80 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

656 answers
256 answers
182 answers
167 answers
135 answers
101 answers
100 answers
94 answers
48 answers
44 answers
42 answers
35 answers
34 answers
33 answers
30 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
15 answers
13 answers
12 answers
12 answers
12 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1T1T1S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing COTTS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing COTTS:

28% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
11% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
8% chance
Suggested:
BRANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

27.6%
RAILE 6.32 bits
10.8%
RAILE 5.54 bits
7.7%
BRANE 5.29 bits
7.0%
TIARE 5.57 bits
5.7%
DROLE 4.59 bits
4.3%
LIANE 5.28 bits
4.2%
RAILE 5.30 bits
4.0%
LEAST 4.69 bits
2.0%
LEARY 4.55 bits
1.9%
SPANE 4.07 bits

Research on COTTS

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

Optimal play

Opening with COTTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.76 guesses and ranks #8,764 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 COTTS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, at or below the proven-optimal 3.76, 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 KAHTS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
COTTS 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).