PESTS
PESTS is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.
Meaning and pronunciation
- Noun
-
plural of pest
Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.
How it sounds
One syllable Say it PEHSTS.
Rhymes with TESTS RESTS NESTS VESTS FESTS
Related meanings
Synonyms plague
In a sentence
Did you find any pests in the apartment?
Forest pests have wiped out our trees.
Use PESTS in a puzzle
As an opener, it rules out about 89.8% of possible answers.
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
NoThe solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.
Past Wordle answer
No completed appearanceNo 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.
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See what the public sample says →How PESTS performs as a guess
Wordle accepts PESTS 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 76.8% of games, misses completely in 23.2%, and leaves about 243 possible answers on average.
In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #9,781 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.76 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 PESTS 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 PESTS 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
Feedback distribution
PESTS can come back 83 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 PESTS; 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 PESTS
What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to PESTS.
Quick reference
Largest feedback groups after playing PESTS:
Research on PESTS
Game-tree analysis and word research for PESTS, with an explanation for each figure.
Optimal play
Opening with PESTS, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.79 guesses and ranks #10,139 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 PESTS can guarantee a solve within six guesses.
Our six-turn simulation says 3.76, at or below the proven-optimal 3.79, 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
- PESTS sits in the intermediate band of the wordfreq scale, appearing about 3 times per million words of written English; the band marks it as a word most readers meet regularly.
- Dominant sense
- Lancaster raters associated it most strongly with sight (3.6 of 5).
Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); 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).