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

NEEPS

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of neep

Noun

mashed swede (called "turnip" in Scotland), especially when served with tatties (potatoes) and haggis.

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

Use NEEPS in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.3% 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 NEEPS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NEEPS 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 76.9% of games, misses completely in 23.1%, and leaves about 232 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,402 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.75 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 NEEPS 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.

4.31 Entropy (bits)
232 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.3% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NEEPS 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.

3.75 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.70 Spread of game lengths
#9,402 Rank among openers
Opening with NEEPS left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.70 means those games clustered within about 0.70 of a guess of the 3.75 average. It ranks #9,402 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
49
3 guesses
784
4 guesses
1,243
5 guesses
261
6 guesses
15

Composition

4/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
ENS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
77%
Green tile
22%
All gray
23%

Feedback distribution

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

551 answers
312 answers
227 answers
216 answers
100 answers
98 answers
97 answers
80 answers
59 answers
54 answers
43 answers
42 answers
35 answers
27 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
25 answers
25 answers
21 answers
21 answers
19 answers
15 answers
14 answers
14 answers
13 answers
13 answers
13 answers
10 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1E1E1P3S1
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 9 points

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

Strategy after playing NEEPS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NEEPS:

23% chance
Suggested:
CAROL
13% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
10% chance
Suggested:
ROANY

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

23.1% →
CAROL 5.99 bits
13.1% →
RAILE 5.31 bits
9.5% →
ROANY 4.92 bits
9.1% →
SLART 5.27 bits
4.2% →
CLARY 4.97 bits
4.1% →
SLART 4.76 bits
4.1% →
ANILE 4.45 bits
3.4% →
PILOT 4.79 bits
2.5% →
SAINT 4.32 bits
2.3% →
SLART 4.59 bits

Research on NEEPS

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

Optimal play

Opening with NEEPS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.77 guesses and ranks #9,021 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.89 guesses at best and is rank #3,857 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.75, at or below the proven-optimal 3.77, 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
NEEPS 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).