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

CUTCH

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

As an opener, it rules out about 81.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

a preservative, made from catechu gum boiled in water, used to prolong the life of a sail or net

Noun

Alternative form of culch.

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 CUTCH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts CUTCH 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 60.4% of games, misses completely in 39.6%, and leaves about 442 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #11,642 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.80 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 CUTCH 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.

3.70 Entropy (bits)
442 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
81.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 12% of evaluated openers
2.24 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How CUTCH 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.

3.80 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.74 Spread of game lengths
#11,642 Rank among openers
Opening with CUTCH left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.74 means those games clustered within about 0.74 of a guess of the 3.80 average. It ranks #11,642 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
45
3 guesses
761
4 guesses
1,195
5 guesses
321
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:
TU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
60%
Green tile
28%
All gray
40%

Feedback distribution

CUTCH can come back 75 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

940 answers
311 answers
125 answers
107 answers
103 answers
91 answers
67 answers
66 answers
63 answers
49 answers
44 answers
33 answers
30 answers
28 answers
26 answers
24 answers
17 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
10 answers
8 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
7 answers
7 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

C3U1T1C3H4
Total: 12 points

Words With Friends

Total: 14 points

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

Strategy after playing CUTCH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing CUTCH:

40% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
13% chance
Suggested:
SOARE
5% chance
Suggested:
SLANE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

39.6%
RAILE 6.22 bits
13.1%
SOARE 5.78 bits
5.3%
SLANE 5.16 bits
4.5%
SOARE 5.47 bits
4.3%
MARLE 4.48 bits
3.8%
BRANE 5.03 bits
2.8%
PAIRE 5.01 bits
2.8%
EARLY 4.82 bits
2.7%
SNORE 4.61 bits
2.1%
RAISE 4.74 bits

Research on CUTCH

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

Optimal play

Opening with CUTCH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.85 guesses and ranks #12,533 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 CUTCH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.80, at or below the proven-optimal 3.85, 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 KUHCH. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

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

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).