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

KEMPS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 88.3% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of kemp

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 KEMPS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts KEMPS 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 74.8% of games, misses completely in 25.2%, and leaves about 277 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #10,011 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 KEMPS 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.

4.02 Entropy (bits)
277 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
88.3% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 23% of evaluated openers
1.93 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How KEMPS 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.

3.76 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#10,011 Rank among openers
Opening with KEMPS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.68 means those games clustered within about 0.68 of a guess of the 3.76 average. It ranks #10,011 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
37
3 guesses
757
4 guesses
1,304
5 guesses
239
6 guesses
16
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

5/5 unique
1 vowels
Common:
ES

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
75%
Green tile
17%
All gray
25%

Feedback distribution

KEMPS can come back 64 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

598 answers
423 answers
208 answers
149 answers
140 answers
84 answers
76 answers
63 answers
58 answers
52 answers
46 answers
40 answers
37 answers
35 answers
32 answers
32 answers
24 answers
22 answers
22 answers
20 answers
19 answers
15 answers
15 answers
14 answers
12 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers
8 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

K5E1M3P3S1
Total: 13 points

Words With Friends

Total: 15 points

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

Strategy after playing KEMPS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing KEMPS:

25% chance
Suggested:
TONAL
18% chance
Suggested:
ARIEL
9% chance
Suggested:
SAULT

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

25.2%
TONAL 5.95 bits
17.8%
ARIEL 5.18 bits
8.8%
SAULT 5.30 bits
6.3%
REATE 4.47 bits
5.9%
STAIR 4.85 bits
3.5%
ROANY 4.82 bits
3.2%
PAINT 5.06 bits
2.7%
CAULK 4.77 bits
2.4%
PLIER 4.54 bits
2.2%
RAINE 4.51 bits

Research on KEMPS

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

Optimal play

Opening with KEMPS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.78 guesses and ranks #9,549 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.88 guesses at best and is rank #3,707 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.78, 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 KEHMPS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
KEMPS 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).