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

NOTUM

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

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

The back; the dorsal side of the thorax in insects or nudibranches.

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

Etymology

From Ancient Greek νῶτον (nôton).

Source: Wiktionary (CC BY-SA)

Use NOTUM in a puzzle

As an opener, it rules out about 90.8% 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 NOTUM performs as a guess

Wordle accepts NOTUM 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 76.0% of games, misses completely in 24.0%, and leaves about 219 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,584 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 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 NOTUM 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.

4.49 Entropy (bits)
219 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
90.8% Avg ruled out

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How NOTUM 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.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.92% Solved within six
0.71 Spread of game lengths
#5,584 Rank among openers
Opening with NOTUM left 2 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.71 means those games clustered within about 0.71 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,584 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
64
3 guesses
876
4 guesses
1,179
5 guesses
217
6 guesses
16

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
NOTU

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
76%
Green tile
22%
All gray
24%

Feedback distribution

NOTUM can come back 98 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

572 answers
252 answers
197 answers
154 answers
143 answers
111 answers
91 answers
80 answers
57 answers
55 answers
51 answers
49 answers
48 answers
35 answers
32 answers
27 answers
24 answers
23 answers
22 answers
21 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
17 answers
13 answers
11 answers
11 answers
9 answers
9 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

N1O1T1U1M3
Total: 7 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

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

Strategy after playing NOTUM

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing NOTUM:

24% chance
Suggested:
RAILE
11% chance
Suggested:
REAST
8% chance
Suggested:
RAILE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

24.0% →
RAILE 6.18 bits
10.6% →
REAST 5.71 bits
8.3% →
RAILE 5.37 bits
6.5% →
SACRE 5.14 bits
6.0% →
SLIER 5.11 bits
4.7% →
PARLE 4.60 bits
3.8% →
RAILE 5.47 bits
3.4% →
ARISE 4.51 bits
2.4% →
CARLE 4.64 bits
2.3% →
SERAL 4.38 bits

Research on NOTUM

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

Optimal play

Opening with NOTUM, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.71 guesses and ranks #5,463 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.82 guesses at best and is rank #2,012 of the 7,453 openers that can still guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.71, 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
NOTUM 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).