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

GULPS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ɡʌlps/

Noun

plural of gulp

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of gulp

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it GUHLPS.

Related meanings

Synonyms DRAFT draught

In a sentence

She drank in big gulps.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)
She drank in large gulps.
© tatoeba.org contributor ariarin (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Use GULPS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 88.0% 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 GULPS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts GULPS 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 71.0% of games, misses completely in 29.0%, and leaves about 287 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #4,043 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.65 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 GULPS 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.

4.18 Entropy (bits)
287 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.0% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How GULPS 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.

3.65 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#4,043 Rank among openers
Opening with GULPS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.65 average. It ranks #4,043 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
51
3 guesses
913
4 guesses
1,198
5 guesses
181
6 guesses
10

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
LSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
71%
Green tile
20%
All gray
29%

Feedback distribution

GULPS can come back 86 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

692 answers
276 answers
260 answers
105 answers
96 answers
86 answers
76 answers
71 answers
70 answers
67 answers
50 answers
50 answers
43 answers
41 answers
26 answers
25 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
16 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers
9 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

G2U1L1P3S1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 12 points

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

Strategy after playing GULPS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing GULPS:

29% chance
Suggested:
ROATE
12% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
11% chance
Suggested:
ROATE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

29.0% →
ROATE 6.13 bits
11.6% →
TIARE 5.82 bits
10.9% →
ROATE 5.37 bits
4.4% →
PAIRE 5.33 bits
4.0% →
RIONE 5.34 bits
3.6% →
TRONE 5.37 bits
3.2% →
CATER 4.55 bits
3.0% →
ROATE 4.81 bits
2.9% →
THALE 4.95 bits
2.8% →
RAILE 4.54 bits

Research on GULPS

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

Optimal play

Opening with GULPS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #6,839 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.81 guesses at best and is rank #1,752 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.65, 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.

Familiarity and learning

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