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

ETAPE

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.5% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

Alternative form of étape.

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 ETAPE performs as a guess

Wordle accepts ETAPE 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 82.9% of games, misses completely in 17.1%, and leaves about 154 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #8,048 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.72 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.

Useful pattern pages

If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.

First-turn measures

All four describe ETAPE 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.

4.80 Entropy (bits)
154 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.5% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 72% of evaluated openers
1.15 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How ETAPE 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.

3.72 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#8,048 Rank among openers
Opening with ETAPE left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.72 average. It ranks #8,048 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
65
3 guesses
809
4 guesses
1,211
5 guesses
250
6 guesses
17
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
3 vowels
Common:
AET

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
33%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

ETAPE can come back 97 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

406 answers
230 answers
199 answers
181 answers
125 answers
113 answers
93 answers
92 answers
73 answers
72 answers
57 answers
47 answers
46 answers
40 answers
34 answers
33 answers
33 answers
32 answers
27 answers
26 answers
24 answers
24 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

E1T1A1P3E1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 8 points

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

Strategy after playing ETAPE

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing ETAPE:

17% chance
Suggested:
SOILY
10% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
8% chance
Suggested:
IDLER

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.1%
SOILY 5.65 bits
9.7%
CAROL 5.29 bits
8.4%
IDLER 4.94 bits
7.6%
HOIST 5.20 bits
5.3%
NOIRE 4.48 bits
4.8%
SNARL 4.27 bits
3.9%
TAINT 4.50 bits
3.9%
RENAL 4.57 bits
3.1%
SOILY 4.72 bits
3.0%
SHIER 4.29 bits

Research on ETAPE

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

Optimal play

Opening with ETAPE, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,973 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 ETAPE can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.72, at or below the proven-optimal 3.73, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it EETAYP. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
ETAPE 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).