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

COXES

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

As an opener, it rules out about 92.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of cox

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 COXES performs as a guess

Wordle accepts COXES 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 83.3% of games, misses completely in 16.7%, and leaves about 188 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,171 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.79 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 COXES 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.

4.39 Entropy (bits)
188 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
92.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 44% of evaluated openers
1.56 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How COXES 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.

3.79 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#11,171 Rank among openers
Opening with COXES solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.79 average. It ranks #11,171 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
52
3 guesses
727
4 guesses
1,266
5 guesses
286
6 guesses
23
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:
EOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
32%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

COXES can come back 73 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

397 answers
348 answers
211 answers
174 answers
168 answers
133 answers
120 answers
76 answers
72 answers
62 answers
62 answers
50 answers
50 answers
41 answers
30 answers
29 answers
28 answers
23 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
14 answers
12 answers
10 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3O1X8E1S1
Total: 14 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing COXES

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing COXES:

17% chance
Suggested:
TRAIL
15% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
9% chance
Suggested:
SAULT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

16.7%
TRAIL 5.95 bits
14.7%
TIARE 5.43 bits
8.9%
SAULT 5.31 bits
7.3%
LATER 4.45 bits
7.1%
TALON 5.07 bits
5.6%
SLART 4.98 bits
5.1%
MOLDY 4.04 bits
3.2%
RAINY 4.56 bits
3.0%
LAIRY 4.69 bits
2.6%
BRANE 4.18 bits

Research on COXES

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

Optimal play

Opening with COXES, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,589 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.94 guesses at best and is rank #5,103 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.79; proven optimal play reaches 3.78. The fixed strategy accounts for the difference.

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 KAHKSUHZ. Estimated pronunciation

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

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, COXES is a kind of enzyme or sailor.

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
COXES 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.

In a sentence

Russets and Coxes are far nicer apples than Granny Smiths and Braeburns.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).