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

KELPS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of kelp

Verb

third-person singular simple present indicative of kelp

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

How it sounds

One syllable Say it KEHLPS.

Rhymes with HELPS

Use KELPS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.3% 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 KELPS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KELPS 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 79.5% of games, misses completely in 20.5%, and leaves about 207 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #7,478 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.71 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 KELPS 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.

4.42 Entropy (bits)
207 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KELPS 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.

3.71 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#7,478 Rank among openers
Opening with KELPS solved every answer in the snapshot within six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.71 average. It ranks #7,478 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
56
3 guesses
806
4 guesses
1,268
5 guesses
210
6 guesses
14

Composition

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ELS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
80%
Green tile
19%
All gray
20%

Feedback distribution

KELPS can come back 79 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

489 answers
344 answers
182 answers
177 answers
126 answers
124 answers
123 answers
72 answers
46 answers
44 answers
44 answers
42 answers
42 answers
34 answers
34 answers
32 answers
31 answers
27 answers
27 answers
22 answers
21 answers
20 answers
20 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
15 answers
14 answers
11 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5E1L1P3S1
Total: 11 points

Words With Friends

Total: 13 points

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

Strategy after playing KELPS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KELPS:

21% chance
Suggested:
TRAIN
14% chance
Suggested:
ORATE
8% chance
Suggested:
CORAL

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

20.5% →
TRAIN 6.00 bits
14.4% →
ORATE 5.26 bits
7.6% →
CORAL 5.01 bits
7.4% →
STAIR 5.31 bits
5.3% →
OLATE 4.34 bits
5.2% →
SHART 4.94 bits
5.2% →
REATE 4.51 bits
3.0% →
POINT 4.98 bits
1.9% →
PIPER 4.25 bits
1.8% →
SHALL 4.42 bits

Research on KELPS

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

Optimal play

Opening with KELPS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.73 guesses and ranks #7,111 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.84 guesses at best and is rank #2,382 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.71, 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
KELPS 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.
Dominant sense
Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (2.7 of 5).

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).