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

LOUPS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of loup

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

Use LOUPS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 91.5% 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 LOUPS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts LOUPS 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 77.0% of games, misses completely in 23.0%, and leaves about 202 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,801 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.63 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 LOUPS 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.

4.59 Entropy (bits)
202 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
91.5% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How LOUPS 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.

3.63 Avg guesses
100% Solved within six
0.68 Spread of game lengths
#2,801 Rank among openers
Opening with LOUPS 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 3.63 average. It ranks #2,801 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
54
3 guesses
952
4 guesses
1,165
5 guesses
168
6 guesses
15

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
LOSU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
24%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

LOUPS can come back 92 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

548 answers
219 answers
203 answers
166 answers
124 answers
111 answers
76 answers
68 answers
60 answers
56 answers
56 answers
45 answers
43 answers
40 answers
38 answers
36 answers
36 answers
31 answers
31 answers
28 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
18 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers
12 answers
10 answers
10 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

L1O1U1P3S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing LOUPS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing LOUPS:

23% chance
Suggested:
TIARE
9% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
9% chance
Suggested:
STARE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.0% →
TIARE 6.20 bits
9.2% →
RAILE 5.30 bits
8.5% →
STARE 5.69 bits
7.0% →
CRANE 5.48 bits
5.2% →
RANCE 4.69 bits
4.7% →
RANCE 4.96 bits
3.2% →
CARNE 5.34 bits
2.9% →
THALE 4.74 bits
2.5% →
ALONE 4.23 bits
2.3% →
CRATE 4.86 bits

Research on LOUPS

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

Optimal play

Opening with LOUPS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.69 guesses and ranks #4,412 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.80 guesses at best and is rank #1,350 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.63, at or below the proven-optimal 3.69, 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
LOUPS 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).