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

EPHAH

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

A former Hebrew unit of dry volume (about 23 L).

Alternative forms: epha, ephi

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

Etymology

From Hebrew אֵיפָה (eifá), from Egyptian jpt (“oipe, a dry measure of volume about 19.2 liters”). Doublet of oipe.

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use EPHAH in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.7% 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 EPHAH performs as a guess

Wordle accepts EPHAH 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 80.3% of games, misses completely in 19.7%, and leaves about 271 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #13,754 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.88 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 EPHAH 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.

3.88 Entropy (bits)
271 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.7% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How EPHAH 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.

3.88 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.73 Spread of game lengths
#13,754 Rank among openers
Opening with EPHAH left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.73 means those games clustered within about 0.73 of a guess of the 3.88 average. It ranks #13,754 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
33
3 guesses
645
4 guesses
1,268
5 guesses
377
6 guesses
29

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
AE

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
18%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

EPHAH can come back 57 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

473 answers
469 answers
333 answers
212 answers
82 answers
80 answers
78 answers
77 answers
64 answers
61 answers
52 answers
48 answers
43 answers
39 answers
28 answers
27 answers
26 answers
20 answers
19 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
10 answers
9 answers
8 answers
8 answers
7 answers
6 answers
6 answers
5 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1P3H4A1H4
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing EPHAH

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing EPHAH:

20% chance
Suggested:
SIREE
20% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
14% chance
Suggested:
TALON

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

19.8% →
SIREE 5.36 bits
19.7% →
SOILY 5.64 bits
14.0% →
TALON 5.08 bits
8.9% →
GLARE 4.69 bits
3.4% →
CORAL 4.51 bits
3.4% →
PILOT 4.91 bits
3.3% →
PRISE 4.89 bits
3.2% →
SHIRT 4.80 bits
2.7% →
SIREE 4.81 bits
2.6% →
ROUTE 4.37 bits

Research on EPHAH

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

Optimal play

Opening with EPHAH, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.89 guesses and ranks #13,635 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 EPHAH can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.88, at or below the proven-optimal 3.89, 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
EPHAH 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); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).