PESTO
PESTO is on the solver's possible-answer list but has not appeared as a Wordle answer yet.
As an opener, it rules out about 94.4% of possible answers.
Meaning and pronunciation
Pronunciation: /ˈpɛstoʊ//ˈpɛstəʊ/
- Noun
-
A sauce, especially for pasta, originating from the Genoa region in Italy, made from basil, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil and cheese (usually pecorino).
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
YesIncluded in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.
Possible answer
YesIncluded among the answers considered by the solver.
Past Wordle answer
Not used yetNo past answer date found.
The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.
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See what the public sample says →How PESTO performs as a guess
PESTO is a possible answer, so it would solve about one game in 2,374 when every answer is treated as equally likely.
Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 86.9% of games, misses completely in 13.1%, and leaves about 133 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #1,834 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.62 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.
Useful pattern pages
If you only know part of the word, start with one of these matching patterns.
First-turn measures
All four describe PESTO 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.
As an opening guess: previous benchmark
How PESTO 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.
Composition
Feedback chances
Example solver route
One example route used by the solver.
This solver benchmark reaches PESTO in 2 guesses.
Feedback distribution
PESTO can come back 109 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:
Letter-value totals
Base letter-value totals for PESTO; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.
Scrabble
Words With Friends
Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.
Try next
Strategy after playing PESTO
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PESTO.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PESTO:
Research on PESTO
Game-tree analysis and word research for PESTO, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PESTO, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.66 guesses and ranks #2,304 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.
No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with PESTO can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.62, at or below the proven-optimal 3.66, 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 PEHSTOH. Estimated pronunciation
This pronunciation is machine-estimated, not taken from a pronunciation dictionary.
Related meanings
In WordNet's sense inventory, PESTO is a kind of sauce.
Familiarity and learning
- Frequency
- PESTO sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with taste (3.4 of 5).
In a sentence
Pesto is God's gift to the world.
Pesto can be frozen into cubes.
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 relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0); Lancaster Sensorimotor Norms (CC BY 4.0).