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

PACOS

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

As an opener, it rules out about 93.1% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Noun

plural of paco

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 PACOS performs as a guess

Wordle accepts PACOS 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 82.4% of games, misses completely in 17.6%, and leaves about 163 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #2,311 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 PACOS 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.

4.76 Entropy (bits)
163 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.1% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 69% of evaluated openers
1.18 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How PACOS 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
99.96% Solved within six
0.67 Spread of game lengths
#2,311 Rank among openers
Opening with PACOS left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.67 means those games clustered within about 0.67 of a guess of the 3.63 average. It ranks #2,311 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
63
3 guesses
934
4 guesses
1,188
5 guesses
158
6 guesses
10
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
2 vowels
Common:
AOS

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
82%
Green tile
26%
All gray
18%

Feedback distribution

PACOS can come back 100 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

417 answers
236 answers
226 answers
174 answers
144 answers
109 answers
104 answers
75 answers
64 answers
58 answers
58 answers
54 answers
43 answers
40 answers
40 answers
38 answers
33 answers
20 answers
19 answers
19 answers
19 answers
18 answers
18 answers
18 answers
16 answers
16 answers
15 answers
14 answers
13 answers
11 answers

Letter-value totals

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

Scrabble

P3A1C3O1S1
Total: 9 points

Words With Friends

Total: 11 points

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

Strategy after playing PACOS

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

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing PACOS:

18% chance
Suggested:
TRIED
10% chance
Suggested:
ALERT
10% chance
Suggested:
RONTE

Follow-ups for common patterns

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

17.6%
TRIED 6.07 bits
9.9%
ALERT 5.55 bits
9.5%
RONTE 5.24 bits
7.3%
STILE 5.34 bits
6.1%
TRINE 4.70 bits
4.6%
CLINE 5.20 bits
4.4%
THALE 4.75 bits
3.2%
RONTE 4.70 bits
2.7%
DROLE 4.36 bits
2.4%
CRONE 4.52 bits

Research on PACOS

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

Optimal play

Opening with PACOS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.68 guesses and ranks #3,500 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

In hard mode it averages 3.78 guesses at best and is rank #891 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 3.68, 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

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it PAYKOHS. Estimated pronunciation

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

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
PACOS 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).